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J LIBRARY 'OF CONGRESS.) 

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i UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, t 






' 4UL. 




DISCOURSES. 



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DISCOURSES 



ON 



ORTHODOXY, 



JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN, 

PASTOR OP THE UNITARIAN CHURCH, WASHINGTON. 



BOSTON: 
WM. CROSBY AND H. P. NICHOLS. 

WASHINGTON : TAYLOR AND MAURY. 

1849. 



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THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

I WASHINGTON 



v* 



^ 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by 

Wm. Crosby and H. P. Nichols, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE: 

METCALF AND COMPANY, 
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



NOTE. 



In revising these Discourses for the press, I have 
made very few references to texts and authorities, 
desiring to occupy the plain and well-known ground 
of the fundamental questions of theological contro- 
versy, and relying more on reason than on erudi- 
tion to confirm my statements. It would be easy 
to give an appearance of the latter, far beyond my 
claims. Orthodoxy I regard, not merely as a false 
or defective system, but as standing in the way 
of a more broad and positive conception of Chris- 
tianity. Its actual existence and power is my rea- 
son for treating it as an individual thing, or for 
treating of it at all. And I have preferred that 
this volume should be a summary (and even popu- 
lar) critieism of the present condition of theological 
speculation, and a preparatory rather than a final 
statement of the Christian spiritual doctrine. 

J. H. A. 

Washington. D. C, April, 1849. 



CONTENTS. 



-4- 



DISCOURSE I. 

PAGK 



ORTHODOX THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY 1 

DISCOURSE II. 

GENERAL OBJECTIONS TO ORTHODOXY 21 

DISCOURSE III. 

THE TRINITY 43 

DISCOURSE IV. 

THE DEITY OF CHRIST 69 

DISCOURSE V. 

THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT 89 

DISCOURSE VI. 

DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE .113 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

DISCOURSE VII. 
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT 137 

DISCOURSE VIII. 

SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY . 159 

DISCOURSE IX. 

HISTORY AND POSITION OF ORTHODOXY 183 

DISCOURSE X. 

LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY 204 



DISCOURSE I 



ORTHODOX THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

THIS I CONFESS UNTO THEE, THAT AFTER THE WAV WHICH THEY 
CALL HERESY, SO WORSHIP I THE GOD OF MY FATHERS. Acts 

xxiv. 14. 

It is my intention, in these Discourses, to examine 
several of the principal doctrines of Orthodoxy, so 
called, and to discuss their claim to our belief and 
respect. I shall have occasion to dissent from many 
things taught in the popular Christianity of our day, and 
to protest as strongly as I can against what I think false 
and hurtful in it ; but I shall hope to do it with proper 
feeling and Christian courtesy. Our religious belief lies 
at the bottom of all our belief. Let us deal with it frankly 
and sincerely, — never shrinking from just criticism, nor 
refusing to give a reason for the faith that is in us. 

And while I shall examine with the most perfect 
freedom into the prevalent theology of the churches 
about us, I trust I shall say nothing in an irreverent and 
scornful spirit. Firm believer myself in a Christian 
faith at heart, a Christian life in truth and love, wherein 
all believers are reconciled to God through his spirit and 
1 



ORTHODOX THEORY 



and his Son, I cannot, if I understand myself, say any 
thing to distress and alienate any religious mind, or 
widen the breaches of the Christian Church, or un- 
settle in any man's mind that fundamental faith. What 
I ask is a fair hearing from those, if they be here, who 
differ from me ; pledging myself to respect as sacred 
the sentiment of religious reverence in every bosom, 
and to perform my task as a high duty which I owe 
to Christ and the Church. My obligation is first to 
those who have so long sustained here a dissenting 
religious body, — to vindicate their position, and set 
forth the views and convictions which have sustained 
them thus far ; next, to our religious community, among 
whom it is the privilege and duty of my office to pro- 
claim the high and animating faith of a Liberal Chris- 
tianity. It is due to both, to give an account of our 
belief, and to state the reasons which justify us in 
rejecting creeds more popular than ours, and sustaining 
an independent church. 

The w r ord Orthodoxy I use neither for praise nor 
blame. Its meaning is simply u right opinion 55 ; that 
is, that opinion, or set of opinions, which is held to be 
right by the majority in any time and place. Its op- 
posite is not falsehood^ but dissent, or liberalism, or 
heresy; and it was in opposition to the popular belief, 
or Jewish orthodoxy, of his day that Paul says, cc After 
the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God 
of my fathers. 55 There are orthodoxy and heresy in 
other things v as well as in this ; and you will readily 
recall them in many of our common forms of speech. 
We apply these terms to what is received and held 
established, or, on the other hand, novel and innovating ; 
to methods of art and science ; to maxims of trade ; 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 6 

to political opinions ; to every thing where there is a 
tendency to split into two parties, — the holders-fast 
and the movers-on, the men of habit and the men of 
theory, conservative and reformer, quietist and radical, 
old school and new school. There is the orthodox 
(or received) creed of democracy, and the heretical. 
There are old school and new school Calvinists ; ex- 
treme right and left in every sect ; even Unitarian u or- 
thodoxy " matched against heresies without a name. 

So the distinction is a very simple and common one, 
implying neither reproach nor blame on either side, only 
difference of mental habit. As applied to religious be- 
lief, we use the word Orthodoxy to designate the prev- 
alent system of modern Protestant theology, — that 
which we find in most of the neighbouring churches, — 
that which is sometimes called Evangelical Christianity. 
This is what I have taken in hand to consider. And 
my object in the present Discourse is to give as fair and 
unprejudiced a statement as I can of what it is. One 
would not spend his time and strength in fighting in the 
dark ; and so, to prevent any misunderstanding, I be- 
gin with an exposition of it. The reasons for rejecting 
it shall appear afterwards. 

'Of the degrees or forms in which we find it, the first 
is that of the sentiment and religious feeling simply. 
It takes for granted the received opinions, and makes 
them the basis of devotion and faith. It raises no 
questions, and harbours no doubts. It believes implicitly 
what is taught in the creed or hymn, without scruple or 
cavil. It finds no difficulty in any of the ordinary re- 
ligious forms of speech, — no difficulty in the Trinity, 
the Atonement, the double nature of Christ, the awful 
penalty denounced on unbelief, — simply because the 



4 ORTHODOX THEORY 

intellect deals not with them, but only the heart. It 
finds joy and peace in believing, though it be the most 
astounding and incomprehensible dogmas. Religion 
comes home to the faith and love, and wakens no 
troublesome process of reason. With Orthodoxy such 
as this, we have no controversy, no quarrel. God 
forbid we should seek to uproot the affectionate faith 
of the heart in any one, or tear away from the living 
vine even the rudest trunk, about which its tendrils may 
be clasped. 

Again, there is the mystic and speculative Orthodoxy, 
— which has got beyond the bounds of distinct and 
logical thought, and deals with vague conceptions and 
metaphysical problems, and clothes its fancy in the garb 
of the popular belief. German mystic and American 
transcendentalist profess a sort of trinity, and bor- 
row some of the phraseology of Christian dogmatics ; 
but though their creed may wear the livery and speak 
in the dialect of the churches, it has not the same mean- 
ing. The churches disown it ; and I have nothing 
either way to do with it. As I shall, perhaps, have 
occasion to show in several examples, it is only one 
of the forms of belief held by many Unitarians, — 
only one sort of heresy, disguised in the formularies 
of the Church. 

But besides these two, the Orthodoxy of sentiment 
and that of metaphysics, there is a third, — the Ortho- 
doxy of sects and creeds. It is this with which I 
have now to do. I shall deal with it simply as an 
intellectual system, demanding men's assent, and offer- 
ing to the intellect its proofs. It claims to be a true 
account, the only true account, of the method of sal- 
vation, as shown in Christianity. It claims to rest on 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



Scriptural authority, and to give demonstration from 
the record for every assertion and every dogma. It 
claims to be the system or " plan of salvation " existing 
in the mind of God before the world was ; implied in 
every word of the primitive history of mankind ; tes- 
tified by witnesses from age to age ; vouched by the 
whole vast apparatus of prophecy and inspiration and 
miracle ; displayed in the life of Christ, and declared 
from first to last by his apostles ; the only system safe 
to believe and know ; perfectly and infallibly true ; the 
one and only method by which man could have been 
saved from sin and the horrors of eternal death ; to 
deny which is to be utterly and for ever lost. 

I beg it may be distinctly borne in mind, that this 
system is all that I have just described, or else that, 
as Orthodoxy, it is nothing. There is no midway be- 
tween these two extremes. Either it is the infallible 
and only saving truth, or it is merely one out of numer- 
ous methods of Scriptural interpretation, — one out of a 
thousand forms of human speculation. Either belief 
in it is absolutely necessary to save us from God's 
wrath and curse, or it has no other merit than as it 
commends itself to one and another mind seeking 
truth. Either the most devoted love to God, the 
purest self-sacrificing love of man, the utmost earnest- 
ness of spirit and integrity of life, — honor that shrinks 
from the smallest stain, and piety that lifts the soul in 
sweetest intercourse to heaven, — all are nothing, are a 
mockery and false show, an ignorant and unacceptable 
offering, without the addition of this form of faith ; or 
man can demand, and God has enjoined, nothing more 
than sincerity of mind and integrity of life, leaving 
the form of opinion to each man's unfettered choice. 
1* 



ORTHODOX THEORY 



This or that system of belief it may be a higher priv- 
ilege to have, — a better basis of character, more con- 
ducive to strength and spirituality of soul ; but this is 
not the sort of merit on which the claim of Orthodoxy 
rests. It allows no comparison, it makes no compro- 
mise. It is nothing, or it is all. If I have it, I may 
trust, humbly indeed, but still hopefully, in the grace 
of God for acceptance and salvation. If I have it 
not, no prayer can be heard, no penitence available, 
no purity of life a ground of pardon or hope, no tes- 
timony of the conscience any thing but a flattery and 
a lie. We may live and work and pray and do deeds 
of charity together, but the grave is an eternal barrier. 
No common trust, no heavenly companionship, in the 
world beyond, can be between the heretic and the true 
believer. To my terrified spirit at the last great hour, 
to the stricken hearts of my believing friends, there 
is no hope for me, but the fearful looking forward to 
infinite anguish and the flames of eternal fire, from the 
vindictive justice of Almighty God ! 

Let it be remembered, then, that the system of Ortho- 
doxy taught in most of our churches says or implies 
all this, in virtue of what it claims to be. All this 
tremendous alternative is taken for granted in every 
argument and appeal. Listen to the language of creeds, 
and sermons, and tracts, and popular religious treatises, 
and you will find I have only understated its terrible 
significancy. Softened down by this man's gentle 
temper, refined and spiritualized by that man's sweet 
and devout heart, it is yet by implication all that I 
have said. As a system it is imperative, absolutely. 
It asks and gives no quarter. To accept it is to share 
a hope of life. To reject it is certain and unending 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



death. If Orthodox teachers shrink from stating this 
alternative, they are false to the profession of their 
creed. Either they dare not confess its full meaning, 
or else their gentler feeling has compelled them, with- 
out knowing it, to desert that creed, and stand upon 
liberal ground. 

Now what is this system of belief, which offers so 
absolute and haughty an alternative ? I shall endeavour 
to state it clearly and distinctly, without prejudice 
or distortion, while I trace it unflinchingly to its com- 
plete results. Its only merit is as a system. Like 
an arch, it must be complete or it is nothing. Shake 
one stone, and it all falls together. It has been con- 
structed and defended by minds of iron logic, — by 
men who boldly followed out their propositions, step by 
step, confident of the first principles they assumed, 
and recoiling at no consequence they were conducted 
to. We respect their mental power, while we dissent 
from their creed. We admire their intellectual honesty 
and courage, but steadily refuse and disclaim the results 
they reached and so resolutely proclaimed. 

The system called Orthodox or Evangelical is in the 
main that taught by Calvin, and is comprised essentially 
in six leading points of faith. Many others are included 
in it besides ; but they are subordinate, and will come 
up incidentally. These make the framework ; and 
each ought to be examined on its own particular merit, 
while still regarded as an essential feature of the scheme. 
I propose to take them up, one by one, and consider 
them in order, with such method and fulness as they 
deserve. They are, the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, 
the Vicarious Atonement, Depravity of Human Nature, 
Eternal Punishment, and the Infallible Authority of the 
Scriptures. 



8 ORTHODOX THEORY 

Each of these six is necessary to all the rest. With- 
out the Trinity, there would be no basis for the system, 
— no theory of the Divine nature to which it might 
correspond. Without the Deity of Christ, the system 
is stripped of its dignity, the work of redemption 
takes a wholly different meaning, and the whole great 
scheme resolves itself into a barren juggle of words. 
The Atonement is needful to the system, because it is 
the system, — the nucleus, the key-stone, the main 
idea, to which all the rest are adjuncts. The native 
depravity of man, exposing him to God's just curse, 
explains the reason why such a work of redemption 
was called for. Endless penalty annexed to unbelief is 
the only motive strong enough to command Christ's 
sacrifice on the one part, or man's assent on the other. 
And, finally, the complete inspiration of the Scriptures 
furnishes the only possible test and the only sufficient 
proof. 

As T have said, its merit as a system lies in its com- 
pleteness, — in its being fully rounded out and compact 
in every part. It is this more than any other thing 
which makes its recommendation to a certain class of 
minds, and which has bound it so firmly in the intel- 
lectual habits of a great portion of the Protestant 
Church. It will be my duty, in respect both to the 
claims it presents and the hold it has on our com- 
munity, to examine it step by step, and give in detail 
our reasons for rejecting it. But first I must give a 
succinct view of it as a whole, showing how its main 
features are developed one by one from a few leading 
statements or assertions ; and next submit some general 
considerations, touching it as a whole and not in parts. 
These two points will occupy the present and the fol- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 9 

lowing Discourse. In these I shall not speak of the 
proofs, — leaving them till I come to particulars, — 
meanwhile contenting myself with a more general and 
simple exposition. 

It will not make much difference what point we start 
from, so only it be in that circle of ideas. According 
to the character and habit of our mind, we might begin 
with the character of God, or the condition of man ; 
with the nature of evil, or the history of the Fall ; with 
the outward proof of misery, or the inward proof of 
sin, or the Scriptural proof of redemption, or the his- 
torical proof of man's need of such a revelation ; with 
speculations on the agency of evil spirits, or on the 
freedom of the human will. Either, I say, may be 
taken as the point of departure, and from either the 
entire theory may be developed. For its merit, as I 
remarked, is as a work of logic. Assume either point, 
and the rest will find their places. .Start from any one, 
and the rest will easily follow. 

In tracing briefly the course of reasoning by which 
the system is held together, I prefer, for clearness' sake, 
to begin with the moral condition of man, as viewed by 
the eye of God. This, it seems to me, gives the most 
plausible and tangible point, and leads most easily to 
all the others. Besides, it appeals, as it were, to the 
human consciousness of every man. Our theory of 
man's condition is not like an abstract dogma, requiring 
labored proof. Scripture may illustrate it, may bring 
it before the mind, and may be our final strongest reason 
for adhering to it ; but, whencesoever derived, it is after 
all our previous assumption, — the ground w T e take to 
build on, — a tacit or gratuitous assumption, perhaps, 



10 ORTHODOX THEORY 

but one that unavoidably shapes and tempers all our 
thought on religious things. 

I. Orthodoxy, then, begins by presupposing that 
mankind is in a condition of rebellion against God, 
and exposed to his everlasting wrath and curse. That 
is, such is man's condition, aside from all considerations 
of the office of Christ, which is to redeem him and 
remove the curse. Naturally, by himself, he is capable 
of no good thing ; can make no acceptable offering to 
God ; stands always in need of forgiveness for the 
infinite wrong in his own soul ; cannot trust his reason 
or conscience, through an innate evil tendency, that 
warps his mind aside from good, and alienates him from 
his Creator. Left to himself, he must inevitably perish. 
The destiny of unending happiness and advancement, 
for which he seems to be calculated if we consider 
some of his native affections and capacities, has been 
forfeited ; and, taking him in his actual state, he is no 
better than an outcast and a rebel. Besides, being 
under the government of a Being infinitely just and holy, 
every sinful act bears the brand of infinite guilt, and 
is justly visited with an infinite penalty. He may have 
moral sense to know his danger and calamity, but can- 
not of himself devise a remedy. With no intercessor 
to plead before the bar of the offended justice of Heav- 
en, there is no way to reach and make appeal to the 
Divine mercy. Behold, therefore, man, in his natural 
estate, at once the greatest and most wretched of God's 
creation ! No certain truth, no immortal hope, no 
escape from -the threatened doom of vengeance, no 
access to the presence and favor of righteous Heaven ! 

But how could so frightful a calamity have fallen upon 
the human race ? It is against all the idea we have of 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 11 

God, — against the whole of the account given of him 
in the Scriptures, — to suppose that he could have 
designed from the first such a doom for any of his 
creatures. It would be blasphemy to think he would 
create beings capable of joy, and torment them delib- 
erately with hopeless and unending woe. The hardiest 
advocate of God's omnipotent right could not venture 
such a plea. It would be to confound and abolish 
every grateful and holy thought of God. It would be 
to dethrone him, the all- wise and merciful, and put a 
malignant devil in his place, — giving the infinite majesty 
of the universe to the only evil, instead of the only 
good. 

How r , then, came man into this condition, since it 
could not have been his first estate ? To account for 
it, there must have been a Fall, which drew down the 
entire human race, — an original sin of the first man, 
whose guilt all share in by inheritance. For his sake 
and in his name earth and mankind were visited with 
a curse, w 7 hich no merely human power can expiate. 
He cut himself off, as it were, by a wilful act, from the 
love of God, and could entail only evil on his posterity. 

But the first man was created upright and free from 
guilt ; free to sin, it is true, but free to righteousness. 
Nothing in his nature then enticed him to sin ; no fatal 
propensity weighed on him then, to overbear and par- 
alyze his will. Guilt was brought upon him from a 
higher sphere of being. He was tempted, and he 
fell. The great Rebel Angel, who had already drawn 
away a third part of heaven's host from their allegiance, 
found man in paradise, where the goodness of God had 
placed him, and, moved with jealousy and spite that 
another should inherit the blessing- he had lost, plotted 



12 ORTHODOX THEORY 

his downfall. The simple and credulous innocence of 
the first pair was no match for the crafty and deceitful 
arts of Satan. The pledge of Divine favor was for- 
feited. The fatal step was taken. The forbidden fruit 
they plucked and ate. And from that hour, from that 
one inexpiable act, dates the downfall, the rebellion, the 
misery of the human race. We have no claim to win 
back the inheritance they lost. No virtue of ours could 
retrieve that guilt, or give us a claim to any special fa- 
vor. And so we are all lost. Though we shared not 
the guilt, we share the penalty ; as from a dissolute and 
spendthrift father is left but a heritage of beggary to his 
child. 

And this is not the whole story of that loss and fall. 
For by that act man has deliberately renounced his alle- 
giance to God, and surrendered himself to Satan, the 
enemy of God. Hence the dominion of evil spirits, 
and the whole array of Satanic agency. Evermore we 
are beset with a host of spiritual foes. The great Ad- 
versary himself, with power and energy only less than 
God's, is perpetually seeking to draw men farther away 
from him. Every temptation to desert our better pur- 
poses, every whispered thought of sin, every feeling of 
envy and malice, every enticement of sensual pleasure, 
is part of that terrible system of treachery, or ambus- 
cade, or open violence, by which the infernal spirit 
seeks to confirm his power. Through his evil influence, 
men turned of old from serving the true and only God 
to worship idols or devils. By him was set in motion 
that fearful tide of crime, the lust, and falsehood, and 
revenge, and craft, and enmity, that have ravaged and 
made waste the earth. And without a special miracu- 
lous deliverance, we are all bound over, hand and foot, 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 13 

without resource or hope, in bondage to him, — to 
serve him in pride and folly and wickedness on earth, to 
serve him in chains and darkness for ever in the world 
below. Such is man's terrible condition, such his un- 
ending doom. 

II. But it is impossible that God should look with in- 
difference upon this wretched fate of man. Created in 
his image, pronounced his child and the head of his 
creation, God's love yet yearns towards man, and will- 
ingly would he deliver him. And here comes in that 
conflict of the Divine attributes which makes necessary 
the great redemption by the Atoning Sacrifice. On the 
one hand, God's mercy cannot willingly consent that his 
child should be for ever in this state of abject and hope- 
less slavery ; but, on the other hand, stern and inexora- 
ble justice cannot overlook the fact, that by his rebellion 
and enmity towards God he has forfeited all his claim 
upon Divine compassion. Again behold the terrible law 
of his condition. To God as sovereign is rightfully due 
all the reverence, homage, obedience, which man can 
render. Every failure is a sin, an act of rebellion, a 
forfeiture of Divine grace. Only the most absolute per- 
fect obedience, extending to every movement of affec- 
tion or thought, and every act of life, could suffice to 
pay that infinite debt. Thus the best man, naturally 
speaking, in his imperfect estate, must fail to render that 
service which alone could be sufficient to merit pardon 
and eternal life ; while every least offence, done against 
the Infinite and Sovereign God, deserves infinite pen- 
alty. And so, the more closely we look at man's con- 
dition, the more appalling does it become. Seen from 
this point of view, there is no remedy, and no hope, un- 
less some power can be found to mediate between those 
2 



14 ORTHODOX THEORY 

attributes of the Divinity, to reconcile the claims of 
strict justice with the pleadings of infinite love. 

Here, then, we see the need, and the preparation 
made, for the Atoning Sacrifice, — to satisfy the twofold 
claim of man's obedience to duty and penalty for sin. 
In both he has incurred an infinite loss and forfeit. 
Some method must be found to redeem this loss, and 
make it possible that he should be forgiven, — possible, 
without lowering the demands of the Divine law, or de- 
tracting from the honor of the sovereignty of God. For 
this, only one way is left open ; without it, reconcilia- 
tion is impossible. A being, infinite in essence like 
God, mortal in condition like man, must fulfil the law 
and abide the suffering in the place of man, standing in 
man's stead before the bar of God, rendering a perfect 
obedience by a holy and spotless life, so as to discharge 
his debt, and suffering the infinite agony of death, so as 
to bear his penalty. Only on such conditions as these 
can the way be open for pardon, and the preliminary 
steps of man's salvation be taken. 

And this course w 7 as followed out, step by step, in the 
life and death of Jesus Christ. The Divine nature put 
on the garment of humanity ; the infinite majesty of 
heaven was clothed in the veil of mortal flesh. Such 
from eternity was the constitution of the Divine nature, 
that one part or person of the threefold Deity was fore- 
appointed to this office, and by miraculous birth dwelt 
in the form of the Son of Mary. Exposed to the at- 
tacks of Satan in the scene of the Temptation, he vindi- 
cated his Dfvine nature by his victory. By a pure and 
spotless life he fulfilled the righteousness that was due 
from man ; by his miraculous works of love he approved 
himself the express representative of God's attribute of 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 15 

mercy ; by his voluntary sacrifice he made his obedience 
complete, and loosed for man the chains of eternal 
death. Then was Satan's kingdom broken, himself baf- 
fled, defeated, and overthrown. Madly he had urged 
men on, till by their hands the Lord of Glory was cru- 
cified and slain ; and now this crowning act ransomed 
the human race from his thraldom, and reinstated the 
dominion and empire of God. 

III. Still as yet the conditions on God's part only 
are fulfilled. Something more is needed before the 
merit of this atoning act passes over and inures to the 
final blessedness of man. Of itself alone it would not 
be enough. Else it would inevitably follow, that, as the 
sacrifice is all-sufficient, so all are equally redeemed ; as 
Satan's kingdom is overthrown, he can no longer have 
claim over a single soul ; and that all mankind is restored 
to its first condition of perfect blessedness. Taking the 
theory thus far, it leads inevitably to Universalism, and 
is, in fact, precisely the system of Universalism first 
taught in this country, about sixty years ago. But here 
is no room for human duty ; no room for personal hope 
and fear ; no motive impelling a man to one or another 
course of belief or practice. One further point remains, 
— man's share in the work of reconciliation. The con- 
dition has been fulfilled on one side ; it must be on the 
other also. God has done his part ; it remains to con- 
sider what man must do. 

Repentance, obedience, faith, — these are the sum of 
the conditions required. The words are easily spoken ; 
but how is the process they signify to come about ? 
How shall man, bound as he is in vassalage to sin and 
Satan, — how shall he repent ? How shall he obey 
whose flesh is weak, whose passions are strong, whose 



16 ORTHODOX THEORY 

conscience is gross and seared ? How shall he believe 
whose mind is clouded in ignorance and fettered through 
unbelief? How, in other words, is man, the slave of 
Satan, to find himself free, rejoicing in the glorious lib- 
erty of the children of God ? 

This great change in man's heart, the change from 
darkness to light, from anarchy to peace, is more than 
a partial change of feeling, or habit, or outward acts. 
It is a change of the entire man, a new birth, the great 
spiritual fact of regeneration. It comes, not by man's 
act, but by God's good grace. The Holy Spirit, the 
Sanctifier and Comforter, the third person in the Divine 
nature, takes possession of the heart, works the conver- 
sion of the soul from sin to righteousness, from death to 
life ; and of this new, regenerate state, repentance, obe- 
dience, and faith are but the natural accompaniment 
and fruit. It is God himself, resuming possession of 
the soul that had been lost to him. Human agency is 
lost and swallowed up in the Divine. Before this pro- 
cess man can do nothing for himself, scarce offer the 
petition of agony and despair. He must cast himself 
on God and wait. The Spirit is adequate to his own 
work, and human interference is a profanation and 
offence. 

But not all does God thus choose and save, or we 
should fall back on the- same difficulty we found before. 
Infinite in knowledge as absolute in power, he foresaw 
from the first, and predestined those who should be 
saved to everlasting life. His Divine will overshadows 
and neutralizes the human will. Whom he would he or- 
dained to life ; whom he would he left subject to death. 
Thus we find ourselves again led on, through the unre- 
lenting course of argument, into the drear and chilling 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 17 

region of abstract speculation. Man's agency has dis- 
appeared, and become as nothing. The sacrifice has 
had its efficacy for those ordained and elect to eternal 
life ; but for all others God's inexorable justice holds 
its steady course. The mansions of heaven are filled 
with those whom his prevailing spirit has wrought upon 
to conversion, regeneration, and faith ; while for innu- 
merable others, who have not heard the word, or hear- 
ing believed not, there remains the same unremoved, 
unexpiated doom, pronounced first on all the race of 
man. 

I believe that, in this rapid sketch, I have accurately 
traced the course of thought which makes up the Ortho- 
dox theory of Christianity, properly so called. I have 
endeavoured to do strict justice to its logical merit, not 
to overstate its several positions, and to show the close 
dependence of each part on all the rest. I have en- 
deavoured to state it in all its method and plausibility ; 
to adopt for the time the tone and way of thinking of 
those who sincerely hold it ; and to trace, step by step, 
its several connected portions. And it has seemed in- 
dispensable thus to set it forth in its completeness as a 
whole. As I think, and have before said, we must take 
it all or none. It stands or it falls together. You can- 
not take its parts at option, omit what you choose. 
Except, perhaps, the doctrine of Election, and the anni- 
hilation of man's free agency, with which it closes, — 
which yet has a close connection in intrinsic character 
with the rest, — there is not a part, not a phrase, that is 
not linked in by that iron and inexorable chain of logic. 
Grant to any one part the strict dogmatic interpreta- 
tion, and the rest follows by compulsion. The lost and 
2* 



18 ORTHODOX THEORY 

rebellious condition of man ; his estrangement from God 
by. the machinations of a malignant spirit, and the for- 
feiture of his birthright; the conflict between the Divine 
attributes, justice and mercy ; the need of an infinite 
atoning sacrifice ; the significance of the life and death 
of Christ ; the final process of supernatural regenera- 
tion, by which the mind is turned to God ; and the final 
rejection of those in whom this process has not taken 
place ; — all are essential parts and features in that system 
of thought, all elements needful in the plan of salva- 
tion so understood and held. 

As I have remarked before, it is not so much the par- 
ticular opinions held, as the tone and character of the 
thought, that marks the creed of Orthodoxy. It is com- 
paratively of little consequence what particular theories 
are held, as the honest and frankly spoken opinions of 
serious minds. It is not so much as two contrary sys- 
tems of doctrine, that Orthodoxy and Liberalism are 
set so widely apart, but as different and radically hostile 
methods of regarding the Divine government and the 
conditions of spiritual welfare. It belongs to my next 
lecture to set forth my general objections to the system 
I have now been exhibiting. At the present time, my 
only object is to show its true character, that we may 
know beforehand what it is we are passing in review. 

The one characteristic of Orthodoxy, beside which 
every other feature is subordinate and insignificant, is, 
that it professes to be the only system of belief by 
which a man can be saved. Every other claim is lost 
sight of in* the astounding grandeur of this one. It 
may, if true, be a. more accurate account of man's re- 
ligious experience ; it may throw a broader light on the 
course of God's providential government, and the mys- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 19 

teries of man's moral nature ; it may better explain the 
motives from which men act, and the reasons of crime 
and suffering in the world ; it may be better calculated 
to heighten our reverence towards God, and so subdue 
and spiritualize our minds, than any other theory that 
could be framed. But all this is absolutely nothing be- 
side its great and absolute claim, as the only condition 
by which man could or can be saved. In all the re- 
sources of God's power and mercy, there was no other 
way possible to rescue us from death. In all the fertile 
expedients of the human mind, in all the testimony of 
the living conscience, there is absolutely nothing else 
that can bring us into communion and favor with the 
Infinite. 

Let this, its absolute and imperative claim, be con- 
stantly borne in mind. Let it be remembered, also, that 
its parts stand or fall together, and that a breach in any 
portion of the evidence is equivalent to a dissolution of 
the whole ; and then let us seriously address ourselves 
to the task of a thorough and patient examination of it. 
And if, as I shall hope to show, it proceeds from a false 
theory, and is sustained by defective proof ; if it wrongly 
represents the design and purport of the Christian Scrip- 
tures ; if it contravenes the majesty and the mercy of 
Almighty God ; if it affronts our best reason, and con- 
flicts with our purest affection ; if it falsely sets forth the 
condition of our earthly life, and opposes our best and 
divinest aspirations in reference to the life to come ; — if 
it does all this, while it cannot claim support from the 
words of Christ, or from any thing we authentically 
know of the purposes and works of God, then let us 
not fear, in a candid and truthful spirit, to set it aside for 
a form of faith more congenial to our mind. Let not 



20 ORTHODOX THEORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the accidental associations of holy memory, let not the 
persuasions of prejudice and habit and worldly influ- 
ence, deter us from the sacred duty we owe to God and 
truth, to examine freely whether these things be so, and 
from offering the only acceptable gift, of hearty convic- 
tion, of sincere and manly thought, of an enlightened, 
and reverent, and confiding faith. Harbour no intel- 
lectual dishonesty and self-deceit. Tamper not with 
the clear and honest conviction of your mind. Exam- 
ine every proposition fairly, and do not refuse to ac- 
knowledge the conclusion to which you are fairly 
brought. Prove all things ; hold fast that which is 
good. 



DISCOURSE II 



GENERAL OBJECTIONS TO ORTHODOXY. 

THEY RECEIVED THE WORD WITH ALL READINESS OF MIND, AND 
SEARCHED THE SCRIPTURES DAILY, WHETHER THOSE THINGS 

were so, — Acts xvii. 11. 



In the previous Discourse I attempted to give an 
account — necessarily brief and imperfect, but candid 
and essentially correct — of the system of Orthodoxy, 
as held in substance, though variously modified, in the 
churches called Evangelical. It is my purpose now to 
present, in a brief and general outline, the principal ob- 
jections which, to my mind, lie against that theory as a 
whole. Let it be understood that this discussion is 
wholly independent of the particular evidence brought in 
support of particular points. It has to do only with the 
system as such, and takes in only those previous ques- 
tions , the right answer to which will incline us towards 
one or the other side. Every person has some bias, 
coming from his education or way of thinking generally ; 
and no one can probably look at any argument with per- 
fect and absolute impartiality. I freely acknowledge this 
bias in my own mind, as to various systems of theology. 



22 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

I confess that I feel insurmountable objections, in the 
nature of the case, which make it impossible for me to 
approach the evidence of certain doctrinal points, touch- 
ing my moral condition and spiritual welfare, as I would 
a chain of reasoning in pure mathematics. There are 
previous considerations, which affect the weight of proof 
on either side ; and therefore, before coming to the proof, 
it is right that you should be aware of those general ob- 
jections to the scheme under review which to me are 
anterior to any proof, and stronger. 

You will readily recall the train of thought by which 
we were guided through the circle of Orthodox belief : — 
1. Man's condition naturally is one of rebellion, aliena- 
tion, and hostility towards God, — - having been seduced 
from the innocence of his first estate by the machinations 
of the malignant spirit, the enemy of God, to whom his 
allegiance has been transferred. 2. To rescue him from 
his lost condition, to make up the arrears of his defied 
and neglected duty, and to save him from the awful pen- 
alty of his rebellion, there is needed an infinite sacrifice, 
— God assuming the form of humanity, so as to fulfil the 
required righteousness, endure the merited punishment 
of guilt, and reconcile the claims of justice and mercy 
in the Divine nature, so as to let man go free. 3. And 
to prepare the soul of man to receive the benefits of this 
atoning sacrifice, there must be a conversion or regenera- 
tion, brought about by the immediate operation of the 
Divine Spirit, exercised irresistibly on those who from 
eternity have been ordained to life ; the rest, of course, 
to endure endlass misery. 

So far, we have not been inquiring into the truth or 
falsity of the doctrine, but only endeavouring to see what 
it i§. And looking at it as a system, we cheerfully ac- 



TO ORTHODOXY. 23 

knowledge that it has considerable merit and plausibility. 
In the first place, it seems to be very complete and full ; 
to have an answer ready for every exigency ; to deal 
with things in a systematic and orderly method ; to com- 
prehend the entire circle of providential action, so far as 
we are concerned in it ; and so to give a precise, clear, 
and consistent account of every relation towards God, 
man, and the future world, in which we can possibly be 
placed. I do not say it is satisfactory ; but it is cer- 
tainly consistent with itself. Its merits in that regard are 
very great. It has herein a great advantage over its op- 
ponents. Like a disciplined and compact body of troops, 
it can bear up long against the uncertain and irregular 
assaults of a vastly greater number, having no defined 
system of operations and no common end in view. It 
has the advantage, too, of being an established and devel- 
oped form of faith. Very few even of the single minds 
opposed to it have an equally definite and consistent 
theory to supply its place, or can pretend to answer the 
same order of questions with equal positiveness ; and, 
taking any number of them together, their efforts seem 
disjointed, feeble, and clashing with one another, beside 
the precise and orderly movements of those thoroughly 
marshalled in its defence. The advantage thus gained 
may be more apparent than real, as I shall endeavour to 
show presently ; but as an apparent and temporary ad- 
vantage, it is certainly very great. 

And, in the next place, it undeniably comes home to 
the religious sensibilities of men. As I shall attempt to 
show hereafter in several examples, it probably grew up, 
in a great degree, step by step, out of the strocgly roused 
devotional feeling, exaggerated by temperament or vari- 
ous excitements, and extravagantly expressed in hymns 



24 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

and prayers ; and from these it was transferred or trans- 
lated into the language of creeds and dogmas and intel- 
lectual propositions of belief. This much is certain, and 
should always be admitted in speaking of it, — that it 
does at each several point meet and gratify a certain 
state of the religious sensibility. In the warmth of 
devout feeling, we adore the infinite majesty of God, so 
remote from our misery and sin ; the conscience is stim- 
ulated by the contrast to reproach us with a greater guilt 
than our own acts have brought upon us, even that 
inherited from the founder of our race ; aware of our be- 
setting moral peril, we tremble at the deceits and temp- 
tations of an invisible spiritual foe ; we appeal to God's 
mercy, while we confess our own unworthiness ; we 
acknowledge gratefully the mediating agency of Christ, 
appealing to our better nature and reconciling us to God ; 
and even his death, endured for our sake, seems not too 
great a sacrifice to infinite justice, to redeem us from 
the deserved punishment of our guilt : even the penalty 
of torture, unending and infinite, seems not too great to 
avenge the ingratitude and wrong with which our sensi- 
tive conscience reproaches us. Now all these are con- 
ditions of mind growing out of the strong action of our 
devout sensibility. It is not the best and most healthful 
action of that faculty. It is far below that condition of 
cheerful, trustful piety, which looks up to God without 
terror, and confides itself, childlike, to the sovereignty of 
infinite love. It is, as I think, an exaggerated and 
morbid state of mind, but one by no means unnatural. I 
have heard prersons far from Orthodox in their belief 
speak in the tone of that sentiment, and seriously accuse 
themselves of deserving the penalty of eternal misery. 
And we should overlook one of the chief sources of the 



TO ORTHODOXY. 25 

power of Orthodoxy over the general mind, if we failed 
to see how exactly it meets, at each point, that roused 
and strained condition of the religious sentiment, and 
gives full play and gratification to the spirit of self-accu- 
sation and implicit surrender to the disposal of the Infi- 
nite, so characteristic of a religious mind. 

One other point, that we may stand perfectly fair to- 
wards every one, when we come to the main argument. 
I disclaim explicitly any jealous or hostile feeling towards 
those of another form of faith. Some, I know, have 
been embittered and alienated by harsh conduct, bigotry, 
misunderstanding, shown towards them by theological 
opponents ; and in their case personal feeling has mixed 
itself iri with the preference one naturally has towards a 
faith congenial to himself, and mingled some rancor with 
their objections towards a different faith. To these un- 
fortunate collisions I have never been exposed. It is 
not only my earnest desire to avoid all such sources of 
prejudice, but it would be impossible for me to feel them 
very strongly. Not only have many of those to whom I 
have felt the strongest affection and respect inclined 
towards the form of faith which I oppose, — not only do 
I cherish the most unfeigned admiration for the lives and 
labors and Christian excellences of devoted men, who 
have lived and live now T in implicit and reverential sub- 
mission io it, finding in it their strength for labor and 
hope of heaven, — iiot only do I regard with sincere and 
admiring gratitude the indefatigable labors of missiona- 
ries, and teachers, and messengers of charity, who have 
planned, and organized, and carried on so vast a scheme 
of Christian enterprise ; but sacred and intimate commun- 
ion in various scenes of the religious life, the counsel and 
sympathy of sickness, the prayer of fraternal faith at the 
3 



26 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

death-bed, participation in the same solemn public ser- 
vices of religion, have all operated to keep me from 
blind and wilful prejudice, and, while I dissent from the 
creed, to make me feel kindly towards those who hold it. 
I look on this religious theory simply as appealing to my 
intellect, and claiming my assent. Wholly aside from 
any personal feeling towards its advocates, I would 
judge it solely by its own intrinsic merit and credibility. 

Now, after so much admission as I have made, it might 
seem a vain and idle captiousness that leads me to inter- 
fere with men's belief at all. My course, in thus deliber- 
ately bringing it forward for discussion and attack, might 
seem to require an apology. And so it would, if we could 
stop here, — if we thought only of those three points, 
its logical completeness, its satisfaction to the religious 
sentiment, and the personal excellence of many of its 
advocates. But we must go further. We must look at 
it as it bears on all sides, as it affects our whole tone 
of thought and feeling on religious things, and especially 
as it meets the case of sincere, conscientious, enlight- 
ened, independent, liberal thinkers. It cannot be denied, 
that many in the Church maintain but a very lax and vacil- 
lating faith ; that the creed keeps at a distance many of 
honest mind, who cannot get over their repugnance to its 
statements ; that many outside the Church find in it 
grounds of scoff and cavil and religious indifference ; 
that it gives occasion among some for intolerance towards 
those who agree not with thern, or pretence of a convic- 
tion more sincere than what they really entertain. 

And this, wholly aside from its intrinsic truth or false- 
ness, — wholly aside from the undeniable merits we may 
ascribe to it. For, from the very law of our intellectual 



TO ORTHODOXY. 27 

constitution, from the nature of the working of our 
thinking faculty, when our assent is imperatively de- 
manded, w^e ask why and bow, and demand to know the 
reason. We become captious and cavilling, perhaps, 
and our mind is not in a condition to receive truth health- 
ily. To demand assent before the proof is the most 
unfair way of dealing with the mind. Argument is fore- 
closed. Candor is made no account of, and set aside. 
If the inducement to feign belief is strong, some will 
become hypocritical and^insincere. If the argument is 
weak, it throws suspicion on the whole class of topics on 
which it bears. And, more than all, if threats are super- 
added to the argument, — if terror is brought in to help 
out a halting demonstration, — if awful penalties are 
hinted at for unbelief, — if the inquirer is told that just 
such an answer he must come to, or else his salvation is 
lost for ever, — it cannot be but that the mind is un- 
hinged, and made unfit to reason. Either one yields, 
in blind and implicit fear, not to persuasion or proof, but 
to overbearing and despotic dogmatism, and purchases 
the hope of spiritual safety at the cost of intellectual 
honor and independence, or else he despises the threat, 
defies the doom, and turns his back in anger on those who 
sought to overawe when they could not convince. 

Now, in however slight a degree, qualified by never so 
many circumstances, it cannot be denied that these ef- 
fects of make-believe, hypocrisy, and unbelief have been 
found wherever it has been attempted, in whatever way, 
to enforce a religious creed. I say nothing of the amount 
of truth or error there may be contained in it. I should 
dread it as much for my own form of belief as any other. 
Whatever the nature of the propositions, to present them 
as a foregone conclusion, to anticipate the proof and de- 



28 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

mand a previous consent, and to denounce a penalty, 
however slight, on one's failure to be convinced, must 
work that harm in some one or more to whom such a 
process of thought is addressed. Such, to some extent, 
has been the result in every church that has attempted it. 
And if it were only a single one that had ever suffered, 
or were now likely to suffer, in this way, his case would 
be reason enough and ample apology for the task I now 
attempt. It cannot be but that, in an intelligent and 
thinking community, there should be many dissatisfied, 
and some in peril of their truthfulness and faith, from 
such demands upon their understanding ; and to them I 
freely and without fear address myself. 

What I say will be included in these three main 
points: — first, objections to the principle involved in 
the Orthodox system ; next, objections to the nature of 
the evidence adduced ; and, lastly, objections to the 
character of the statements contained. 

I. I trust I have already said enough to indicate the 
inherent and unqualified objection I find to the principle 
that lies at the bottom of the system of Orthodoxy. You 
cannot possibly make me believe, — I challenge all the 
dogmatic theologians in Christendom to make me once 
admit it to be credible, — that God could make the sal- 
vation of any man depend on the acceptance of particular 
statements in metaphysics or theology, or the authority 
of any creed or outward institution whatsoever. The 
objection is unqualified and absolute. It lies not only 
against the proof itself, but against the entire system and 
mode of proof. It forms an inherent and insurmount- 
able obstacle, and forecloses my own mind utterly to any 
plausibility that can possibly be advanced in behalf of 
such a principle. 



TO ORTHODOXY. • '29 

I know, as certainly as I know my own existence, that 
men's minds differ, radically and fundamentally, as to 
certain points. Whether the difference is innate, or 
comes by education, — whether it is absolutely insur- 
mountable or not, — I do not care to say. For all prac- 
tical purposes, it is certainly impossible that there should 
be identity of opinion on matters of theological belief. 
My Catholic neighbour finds no difficulty in believing 
that the sacramental bread and wine are literally the bodv 
and blood of Christ ; while, to a rationalist, any thing 
positively miraculous is, in his present state of mind, ab- 
solutely incredible. One regards the Divine nature as 
existing in a trinity of persons ; while another will not 
acknowledge theoretically any other mode of the Divine 
Being than as the diffused Spirit of the Universe. One 
thinks of man's intellectual and moral powers as closely 
bound up with and dependent on the bodily organization, 
to perish with it unless miraculously renovated and 
sustained ; to another, the human soul is inherently and 
essentially immortal, so that he cannot possibly think of it 
as any way subject to decay or dissolution. I do not say 
that all these ways of thinking are equally true, or equally 
safe and meritorious, or equally congenial to our intel- 
lectual faculty. But I do say that they indicate such a 
radically different mental constitution in different men, 
that I cannot possibly conceive or allow that a righteous 
God should require sameness of belief on any point as 
indispensably necessary to receiving any of his favor. 
And this fundamental objection is a matter of principle, 
anterior to any argument. It applies not to this or that 
set of opinions, but to all dogmatic assumptions, and the 
unqualified requisition of any theological creed whatso- 
ever. 

3* 



30 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

II. But waiving this, — which I state thus strongly so 
as to bring the principle of the opposing systems into full 
relief, — a yet more fatal objection lies against the system 
under review, regarded as claiming authority over the in- 
tellect, and demanding assent in the name of God. From 
the very nature of the case, the evidence for it must be 
insufficient. Granting it to be true, it can never be 
proved true. The argument for it mifst be defective and 
fallacious, from the nature of the case. For there is no 
authority to which we can appeal. An umpire or arbi- 
trator, accepted on both sides as absolute and authorita- 
tive, is clearly wanted to settle the points of doubt : and 
where shall we find such a tribunal ? where, at least, a 
tribunal to which we can go as Protestants ? I can un- 
derstand a Catholic when he talks to me about the au- 
thority of his Church. I can understand, at least, how 
that authority, and the infallible inspiration claimed for it, 
should settle all disputed points among Catholics them- 
selves, although I maintain it to be impossible to bridge 
over the chasm between that authority and our minds, or 
to bring any one by pure argument either into or out of 
that exclusive and uncompromising Church. For here, 
too, the selection of the authority is part of the very 
question at issue. But how a Protestant, having once 
disowned that authority on earth, and declared for lib- 
erty of mind and conscience in the interpretation of God's 
word, can commit himself to that solecism, that blunder, 
that defiance and contempt of his own first principles, to 
assert a creed dogmatically, and declare that a right 
belief in it is essential to the Christian character and 
hopes, I do not understand. 

Will he tell me that the Scriptures are such an infal- 
lible and Divine authority as we require, to make us sure 



TO ORTHODOXY. 31 

of our faith ? But which of the books of Scripture ? — 
for all Christians are not agreed as to the canon or true 
list of the sacred books. The Catholic Bible is in several 
respects different from ours. Will he say the Bible as 
held and read by Protestants ? But how does he know 
it to be literally inspired and infallibly true ? By its own 
declaration ? Even allowing that this is the true mean- 
ing of its assertions, (which I by no means think,) it 
would be reasoning in a circle, taking for granted the 
very thing we want to prove. How do you convince me 
that that very assertion is infallibly true, and rightly un- 
derstood ? Can the book prove its own inspiration to 
one who does not believe the book, any more than to one 
who does not think it says so ? 

But take it for granted, what then ? Whose interpre- 
tation of the Bible shall we accept ? We know that 
studious and zealous men, taking very much the same 
view of Scripture inspiration, have come to very differ- 
ent conclusions as to various matters of faith. If any of 
them are right, some of them must be wrong. Setting 
aside our wholly different view of inspiration, I as sin- 
cerely think the system of Orthodoxy is not found in the 
Bible, as my neighbour sincerely thinks it is. And who 
shall decide between us ? Now that w T e have discarded 
the paramount authority of the Church as over private 
reason, and we find that Scripture reads differently to 
two different men, equally learned and equally sincere, 
where is our tribunal ? 

Shall the test be assiduous study, with grammar and 
dictionary and the help of the learned tongues ? Then 
what a mockery to the faith of the simple and ignorant ! 
Whose learned decision shall they trust ? To which 
party shall they go, — the awful alternative being life and 



32 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

death, — heaven and hell ? Or is there no sure belief 
and salvation for them at all ? Away with this cruel 
mockery of a revelation, to be found only in dictionaries 
and grammars and library-shelves! 

The true test, then, some will say, is the Holy Spirit, 
interpreting the Scripture record, and teaching infallibly 
the saving truth. Yes, the interpretation of the Spirit, 
— God's own voice to us, — we will take that, and that 
shall be our guide. Yes ; but do you claim God's in- 
spiration for yourself, and deny the same to me ? If so, 
your reliance this time is more weak and foolish than all 
the rest. It is the height of spiritual arrogance, equal to 
that of the whole hierarchy of Rome, narrowed down to 
the pitiful conceit which makes one poor mortal arrogate 
a monopoly of God's inspired word. As if the Al- 
mighty should narrow and restrain himself, and whisper 
to those of one sect or creed the saving truth he arbitra- 
rily withholds from every other ! No ; we will never 
consent to this. 

And let it be borne in mind, besides, that this ultimate 
resource, this claim of the Holy Spirit's own interpre- 
tation to the believer's heart, is full as good for one 
side as for the other. It signifies one of two things. 
Either it is a declaration of the sacred, indefeasible right 
of every human soul to trust its own most earnest 
thought, and confide itself without fear, in its search for 
truth, to the guidance of the God of truth, and so is 
the most simple and absolute liberalism, the very doc- 
trine I am laboring to maintain ; or else it is the most 
arrogant, narrow, domineering, unworthy form of spirit- 
ual usurpation, foreclosing argument by the assumption 
of personal infallibility, and abandoning the whole ground 
of appeal to any possible authority recognized in com- 



TO ORTHODOXY. 33 

raon by any two minds. And whichever interpretation 
we accept, we come round at last to an absolute demon- 
stration of what I said before ; that, from the nature of 
the case, there cannot be evidence sufficient to establish 
the creed of Orthodoxy, as the only saving faith. Xo 
healthy and sound intellect, I think, can possibly admit 
that the acceptance of such a creed, or any creed, 
should be the ground of acceptance with the just God. 
We cannot conceive of greater dishonor done to him, 
than, not only to say that such a scheme was necessary 
to man's salvation, but then to add that one must think 
so, or be for ever deprived of all its benefit. 

III. Again ; besides the objections I have stated, 
to the fundamental principle and the nature of the evi- 
dence on which Orthodoxy rests, I have further reasons 
against the character of the doctrines which compose it. 
I will state these reasons briefly in order ; — as they ap- 
ply, first, to the view of the Divine government ; next, 
to the condition of man here represented ; and lastly, to 
man's assumed agency in the work of his own salvation. 

The view of the Divine government contained in the 
Orthodox theory, disguise, or palliate, or explain it how 
you will, is such as we cannot possibly admit, when 
thinking of the character of the Christian's God, — 
the Merciful and Holy One. It represents him as a 
Sovereign in the most unamiable and repulsive charac- 
ter assumed by petty monarchs of earth, — as supreme- 
ly jealous of his personal glory, and vindictive to the 
uttermost in punishing the smallest dereliction from the 
homage due. And here there is no room for the plau- 
sible extenuations we might use in behalf of an infe- 
rior sovereign. We cannot speak of the " nature of 
things " as requiring infinite penalty for guilt done to- 



34 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

wards an infinite being ; for the " nature of things " is 
nothing more than the expression of his will ; and, 
prevaricate as we may, we must come round to this 
at last, — that every throb of torture, every moment 
in the infinite duration of agony, (supposed to be mer- 
ited by the guilt of man,) is the special appointment of 
God, and by him exacted to the uttermost; showing a 
deliberate, vindictive, I might almost say malignant, in- 
fliction of misery, which sets our imagination aghast, 
and makes us wonder if it is not some fever-dream of 
the horrors of Satan's realm we are considering, rather 
than a calm and well-judged opinion as to the rule of 
Almighty God. 

. Neither can we speak of " reasons of state " and 
the honor of his government demanding such a penalty. 
It were blasphemy and insult to the Majesty of Heaven, 
to insinuate any peril of turbulence and anarchy to 
supersede that beneficent rule. We know that Divine 
power works steadily, prevails irresistibly. So, by the 
terms of this creed, it works and prevails on the souls 
of the elect. Could its energies be expended in inflict- 
ing tortures on a u rebellious worm," — least of all on 
the plea of danger and anarchy, — if it were not so ? 
True, this is only half the Orthodox representation of 
the Divine nature. True, the attribute of mercy is 
matched against that of justice, and the impending pen- 
alty is only the occasion for the display of atoning love. 
But who taught us that, in the pure and absolute nature 
of the Deity, there can be such a conflict of attributes, 
like the conflict of the passions in the human breast ? 
Does any one seriously mean that justice and mercy 
are at variance, — except, indeed, in the debates and 
perplexities of our imperfect reason ? Will any one 



TO ORTHODOXY. 35 

seriously transfer that imperfection to the Godhead, 
and maintain that perfect justice would demand what 
man cannot render, or that perfect love could consent 
to the sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty ? 

Then what becomes of God's wisdom and omnipo- 
tence, if his design is thwarted, the harmony of his 
creation broken up, at the very moment, as it were, of 
completion, by the contrivance of his subtle foe ? 
Was God baffled and outwitted by Satan, and unable 
to save his creation from the devastation and wretched- 
ness that must inevitably ensue ? Or, on the other hand, 
(which is even worse to think^of,) did he deliberately 
intend a mockery when he gave Adam his law ? Did 
he place him there, with ignorant innocence for his only 
shield, and expose him on purpose to all the deceits and 
assaults of the Enemy ? Did he leave him at the 
mercy of such a powerful and malignant spirit, knowing 
beforehand that he must fall a prey, and appointing be- 
forehand the extreme and frightful penalty ? To this 
shocking dilemma w r e are brought at once by the Or- 
thodox statement of God's government and the law 
established over man. We cannot escape it. The 
alternative is simple and plain. Either, on the one hand, 
God did not know the peril, or knowing could not prevent 
it, and Satan triumphed at the expense of his wisdom and 
his pow r er ; or, on the other hand, knowing it, and having 
ability to defend man from it, he left him unguarded, 
with the appalling certainty that he would fall, and that 
no possible effort, humanly speaking, could save him 
from infinite misery and despair. 

Thus, whatever way we look at it, the character of 
God, as shown in this theory, is full of contradiction 
and imperfection. Except by a subversion of all our 



36 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

ideas of right and wrong, — by utterly denying the 
moral distinctions most venerable and sacred, — by ob- 
scuring every thing in the Divine nature which makes a 
difference between holiness and sin, good and evil, God 
and the Adversary of God, — we cannot get over the 
radical contradiction. We may cover up one half, and 
think of him as the personation of avenging justice. 
We may cover up the other, and remember only the 
attribute of atoning love. But we cannot view the 
Divine character as a whole, without confounding and 
denying our very idea of God. We destroy irretriev- 
ably either his wisdom, or his omnipotence, or his 
mercy and just dealing towards his creatures. And I 
fcannot look steadily on such a representation as this, — 
once putting out of sight the amiable and excellent traits 
in many who sincerely hold it, — without doubting 
whether I am in the pale of Christian thought at all. 
No pagan has done such dishonor to his false god as to* 
give him a character like this. Once put it in defi- 
nite shape, tell it in plain words, and the conception 
becomes blasphemy, — a parody and mockery of the 
holy attributes of God. And this objection, I think, 
is absolutely inseparable from that system of theology 
which we are now considering. 

Nor is our objection diminished by taking into ac- 
count the moral state of man, as here set forth. For 
we must accept one side or the other of the following 
alternative. On the one hand, if we consider him as 
born into it, inevitably, and in the unrestrained course 
of providence*, then we take the guilt from him and 
throw it back on God. It is useless to say he inherited 
it from the founder of the race ; for who constituted 
the organic law which made Adam's sin transmissible 



TO ORTHODOXY. 37 

to his posterity ? Who ordained the system of things 
io which one's character depends on his progenitors ? 
Or who made the arbitrary appointment, that one who 
has not sinned should be treated as if he had, because 
some one else has sinned, — especially when it is utterly 
out of his own power to alter his own condition, or to 
have avoided coming into it ? It is no more my fault 
that I was born a son of Adam, than that I was born 
at all ; and what power is it that imputes his guilt to 
me ? On this supposition, the greatest possible punish- 
ment is inflicted for the greatest possible misfortune ; 
and that misfortune is brought on us by the selfsame 
Being who visits it with such terrific vengeance. 

On the other hand, if we consider that a man's own 
sin, his own wilful and personal and positive fault, has 
brought the condition upon him, then the very point and 
significance of the assertion are lost. The doctrine of 
inexpiable rebellion and infinite guilt dwindles down to 
some general and sweeping assertion about the amount 
of sin and misery in the world. Now this is not the 
point in controversy. There may be a vast deal of 
crime and wretchedness in the world, — an infinite 
amount, to all intents and purposes, — that is, so far 
as concerns our power of estimating it and relieving it. 
This is an assertion which I do not care just now to 
admit or contradict. To my mind it seems exaggerated 
and one-sided, — a morbid and hypochondriacal view to 
take of human life. But let it go. All I have to say 
of it is, that it is not the Orthodox dogma with which I 
am contending ; that it abandons the theological sig- 
nification ascribed to the fact of sin ; that it gives up 
the whole ground of strictly infinite guilt, and the desert 
of infinite penalty, and becomes a tame and common- 
4 



38 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

place assertion, to be judged of by our good sense and 
good taste, rather than by any theological criterion. 
Whichever way we take it, it becomes equally objec- 
tionable and inadmissible as part of our religious belief. 
It may be the transient suggestion of an upbraiding con- 
science, but cannot be the deliberate conviction of a 
clear, practical, sagacious, and healthy mind. 

Lastly, the agency of man in the work of his own 
salvation. This, in the strict interpretation of the creed, 
is absolutely nothing. Conversion, regeneration, faith, 
are superinduced upon him by the irresistible operation 
of the Holy Spirit. The great turning-point of the 
spiritual life and destiny is just as much out of his 
reach to control, as the circumstance of his being born, 
or being born inheritor of Adam's guilt. And yet, 
from the very nature of the religious faculty, from the 
constant testimony of conscience, appeal must be made 
to him as a responsible being. The whole language of 
religion would be ridiculous and a solecism, if it did not 
take for granted his accountability. Man, we are as- 
sured, can of himself do literally nothing. And yet, 
this powerless creature, this slave of Satan, this impo- 
tent tool of a malignant power, this breathing, guilty, suf- 
fering machine, is addressed, is solemnly appealed to, 
as if by his own act he were drawing down the impend- 
ing doom of death. 

This contradiction in terms no theological ingenuity 
has ever been able to get over. All attempts to avoid 
the dilemma have ended in an impotent and barren jug- 
gle of words* The alternative stares you in the face,— 
either man is a free agent, or he is not ; if he is, he must 
be appealed to, to work out his own salvation ; if he is 
not, it is not his fault if salvation is not put upon him 



TO ORTHODOXY. 39 

from without. The intellect will for ever obstinately 
return, and stick upon that stubborn alternative. And 
how is this alternative met by the creed of Orthodoxy ? 
How is the sensitive and excited conscience, awake to 
the sense of unworthiness, and trembling at the threatened 
doom, — how is it relieved, or encouraged, or helped, 
by any assurance coming from that creed ? Alas ! only 
by the most unworthy dallying with words, — by the 
most cruel mockery and discouragement to its sincere 
and sensitive emotion. I have heard the u sinners " of 
a Christian congregation solemnly assured that they 
could not take a single step to secure their salvation, — 
that such was the alienation of their heart, they could 
not even raise an acceptable prayer to God. Nothing 
seemed left them but utter despair, so far as the creed 
was concerned. But the more humane spirit of the 
speaker encouraged them to hope, that, though a prayer 
to God would fall on the unheeding air, be lost in the 
blank and empty sky, yet a petition to Jesus might be 
heard, and lead the way to the bestowal of holy influen- 
ces. And this petty casuistry and subterfuge was the 
only way of escape from the inexorable language of the 
creed, so as to meet the imperative demand of common 
humanity. The dogma is barbarous, chilling, horrible. 
The only refuge from its terrible alternative is in u that 
glorious inconsistency, which does honor to human na- 
ture, and makes men so much better than their creeds." 

Thus I have given you the principal objections, as 
they lie in my own mind, first, against the principle 
involved in the creed of Orthodoxy ; second, against the 
nature and validity of the evidence adduced ; and third, 
against the character of the propositions contained. It 



40 GENERAL OBJECTIONS 

will be my design hereafter, to speak more particularly 
of the argument in behalf of the several leading points. 
But, in conclusion, let me anticipate two objections 
which may be brought against what has now been said. 

It may be argued, that I am reasoning, not against the 
Orthodoxy really held and professed in our churches, 
but against a theory or phantom of it in my own brain, 
and arbitrarily got up for the sake of disparagement and 
attack, — in other words, that I do not fairly represent 
the system I oppose. If any one says this, I put to 
him the following question. Does the Orthodox creed 
or church to which you adhere demand belief in it as 
a condition of salvation, or does it not ? If it does, 
that is the only representation I have made, — the only 
point against which I have directed my attack. All the 
rest belong to this ; and, for all my argument is con- 
cerned, they may as well be what they are as any other. 
Call it calumny and misrepresentation if you will ; but 
accuse your creed of it, not me. If it does not, then 
all I have to say is, that it is not the system I am deal- 
ing with ; and I am glad to find in you another advocate, 
consciously or not, of an independent faith. 

Again, it may be argued that the belief required is not 
the only condition of salvation. A man's creed will not 
save him, unless borne out by the evidence of his life. 
So far so good, if a higher standard of virtue is hereby 
inculcated. But the appalling, the fatal declaration is, 
that the evidence of his life will not save him without his 
creed. Do you say that is the very word of Jesus, — 
u he that beh'eveth not shall be condemned " ? Believ- 
eth not what ? Here, again, will you assume it before 
the proof ? With my idea of salvation, indeed, as the 
glorious expansion of the soul, the spiritual growth in 



TO ORTHODOXY. 41 

freedom and blessedness, the life of man in perfect com- 
munion with the Father of Spirits, I can see how truih, 
as the aim of all earnest search, the perpetual reward of 
sincere endeavour, how faith, as the holy alliance be- 
tween the soul and God, should be essential to it. But 
that it should depend — this alternative of blessedness 
or woe — on the belief of statements arbitrarily laid 
down, though by God himself, is w 7 hat I cannot think. 
And it is this which neutralizes and pervert3 the dec- 
laration, that a life is required in conformity with the 
creed. The insuperable difficulty is, that the creed 
should be exacted at all, absolutely and imperatively. 
Then to demand a good life besides, according to the 
moral theory of that creed, is only to aggravate the 
burden ; double the injustice ; superadd another el- 
ement of vindictive harshness ; make the little finger 
thicker now than the loins before ; and whereas men 
were then chastised with w 7 hips, chastise them now with 
scorpions. 

For relief to this, I present the contrast in as few 
words as possible. The doctrine I profess adheres 
strictly to the mercy and perfect justice of God ; it 
does not deny and disparage the claim of human reason, 
and turn it off with a vague talk of mystery ; it does 
not underrate the claim of righteousness or deny the 
infinite value of truth ; it does not mock and torture the 
tender conscience, as it strives to guide the soul to God. 
But it says, approach him with a glad, courageous, con- 
fiding faith. Put off your iniquity, not so much in slav- 
ish fear of his vengeance, as for the glory of being 
nearer his benignant presence. Receive the word of 
truth with all readiness of mind ; and search the Scrip- 
tures, the Gospel of Christ's life especially, and " the 
4# 



42 GENERAL OBJECTIONS TO ORTHODOXY. 

epistle on the heart," freely, candidly, reverently, wheth- 
er these things are so. Better partial error in a free and 
true spirit, than abstract truth in a slavish, false, and 
narrow spirit. " God requires not the Tightness so much 
as the uprightness of your opinions." The truth saves, 
only through the free and hearty love of truth. 



DISCOURSE III. 



THE TRINITY. 

TO US THERE IS BUT ONE GOD, THE FATHER. OF WHOM ARE ALL 

things, and we in him. — 1 Corinthians viii. 6. 

In the two preceding Discourses, I have exhibited the 
scheme of Orthodoxy as a whole, in the form in which 
I suppose it to be held and taught generally ; and have 
also stated my general objections to it, as fully and dis- 
tinctly as the nature of my plan would permit. I pass 
now to another department of my course, namely, the 
special doctrines included in that scheme, the nature of 
the evidence brought to sustain them, and my own rea- 
sons for rejecting them. 

And let me say briefly, in anticipation, that I do not 
consider a public assembly a fit place for weighing and 
estimating duly the whole mass of argument that bears 
upon the several points. Where the discussion takes 
the form of debate or oral controversy, the advantage 
will be on the side of the nimble tongue and quick re- 
tort. And even in the more deliberate and grave meth- 
od of a lecture or discourse, time cannot be given for 
that study and meditation which a subject of this nature 



44 THE TRINITY. 

demands. I do not ask you to listen as if it were pos- 
sible for me to meet every question, answer every scru- 
ple, and take up every doubtful point of proof. I fairly 
warn you, that volumes and libraries of controversy 
have been written, of which I cannot pretend to give 
you so much as the faintest outline ; that laborious and 
thoughtful men have spent often the best of a lifetime in 
profound investigation relative to some single one of 
these very points; and that the transition from one mode 
of belief to another has often been one of the most 
earnest and solemn forms of personal experience, in- 
volving weeks or years of painful study and self-scrutiny, 
the sacrifice of dear friendships, the perilling of sacred 
associations, in short, a complete revolution of the whole 
intellectual and moral state. Such arduous labors, such 
profound experiences, have been the price at which 
earnest minds have purchased their glimpses of Divine 
truth. 

Having suffered comparatively little of that sad and 
distressing passage from previous belief through doubt 
towards a different conviction, — at least as to these or- 
dinarily mooted doctrines, — I may possibly overlook 
some points which press heavily on many minds. And 
far from contenting you with the amount of evidence in 
detail sufficient to answer every inquiry, I can only 
hope, at best, to suggest to you trains of thought, which 
you may follow out ; to present the case as it lies in my 
own mind, after such attention as I have been able to 
bestow, and then leave it to your own interest and intel- 
lectual honesty to satisfy yourself as to the sum total of 
the argument. The Scriptural proof, in particular, I 
shall be forced to treat rather by masses, and in general 
terms. The sort of labor needed to appreciate the 



THE TRINITY. 45 

force of words and phrases in a foreign tongue is one 
alien to and irksome for such a place as this. I cannot 
give you the study itself, but only the results of study, 
— more that of others, too, than mine ; and this I can 
only do with as much fairness, brevity, and thorough- 
ness, as the nature of the case will allow. 

My subject to-night is the doctrine of the Trinity, — 
a doctrine or theory of the Divine nature which serves 
as the basis for the entire system under review, — the 
intellectual substratum on which rests that whole view 
of God's providence and human life. Its importance 
may be judged from the fact, that the boundary of the 
two great divisions in Christian theology (or, as some 
would have it, the dividing line between Christian and 
unchristian thought) is at this very point ; that the Trin- 
ity is appealed to in the state papers of many nations, 
and its name given to a multitude of church structures 
in every land ; that it forms the first article, or the ex- 
plicit comment, in the creed of very many churches ; 
and that it has been the central topic of inquiry to most 
of the laborious and thoughtful men who have investi- 
gated the great field of Christian doctrine. Where 
scholars, and wise men, and pious Christians, have dif- 
fered so widely, where the war of controversy has so 
long and so loudly raged, it becomes us to be modest, 
patient, thoughtful, in making up our minds. At best I 
cannot claim positively to disprove the doctrine ; but 
only to expose the insufficiency of the evidence on 
which it rests. 

Those who are at all familiar with the history of spec- 
ulation know that a trinity of some sort has been a fa- 
vorite formula of thinking, from the very earliest times. 



46 THE TRINITY. 

The number three has had peculiar attraction for those 
fond of the theory of numbers. It is the smallest num- 
ber in which there can be both difference and decision, 
— a minority and majority ; it gives the fewest points 
that will fix a geometrical plane, or define a surface ; and 
it is found again in summing up the two combining forces 
(as in mechanics or magnetism) with their result. Spec- 
ulative minds have, from the first, run very much upon 
such theories and forms of thought ; and accordingly 
a trinity is one characteristic feature in the philosophy 
of almost every nation. Thus, the East Indian has 
his trinity, of the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. 
The Egyptian hieroglyphics indicate, we are told, a 
trinity, taught by the Theban priesthood before the 
time of Moses, almost coinciding with that of some 
Christian creeds. The number three is continually re- 
peated in the reckoning of the Roman and Grecian tribes. 
The Greeks, in their mythology, divided the realm of 
nature among the three great gods, of the air, the ocean, 
and the lower world. Plato, the finest philosophical 
genius of antiquity, conceived of the Divine nature as, 
first, the abstract, infinite, unutterable Good ; next, the 
active Intellect, or principle of Thought ; and third, the 
Vital Power, or the force of organic Life. Some of the 
Jews, and many of the early Christians, were students 
of Plato, or of his followers ; and they tried to express 
the same thought in the main, by Jewish or Christian 
phraseology. One of the schools of German speculation 
finds a sort of trinity in every force of nature, — making 
a system of polarities, each with its force, its counter- 
force, and the confluence of the two ; while a well-known 
French philosopher reduces all forms of thought to the 
threefold expression, the Finite, the Infinite, and the 



THE TRINITY. 47 

Relation between the two. A favorite view of man is, 
as consisting of body, soul, and spirit : the faculties of 
the mind are classed in the three departments of think- 
ing, feeling, and acting. And, not to weary you with a 
longer catalogue of triads, Mahomet, who is celebrated 
for his fierce opposition to any infringement of the bare 
abstract unity of God, seems to have heard of Christian 
belief under the spurious form of a trinity, consisting of 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Mother ! * 

These illustrations will not seem out of place, when 
we consider the history and the speculative interpre- 
tation of the Christian Trinity. They serve to throw 
light on that habit or propensity of the human mind, to 
regard things under this threefold aspect, thus giving 
a certain theoretical roundness and completeness to the 
thought. Still, they are by no means a fair account of 
the Trinity, as held by Christians. That is better seen 
from the point of view of the religious consciousness. 
If we analyze the thought or emotion that fills the mind 
of a Christian man, as he reflects gratefully on the Divine 
love and wisdom, or girds himself to the solemn work 
of life, or looks forward with trembling hope beyond 
the still border of the grave, we shall find, amongst the 
throng of confused and mingled sentiments, that three 
great thoughts stand out in more clear relief, or are fixed 
so deep as to underlie all the rest. I speak now simply 
of the religious consciousness, which does not deceive, 
and is substantially alike in every Christian man. It 
seems a natural and not a fanciful description of that state 
of mind to say that it consists in reverence towards the 
Father, the Author and Source of all ; in a sense of 
personal gratitude and love towards Christ, who, as 

* Gibbon, Chap. L. 



48 THE TRINITY. 

brother-man, brought the heavenly gift of truth ; and in 
that peculiar emotion or influence within the soul, to up- 
lift, counsel, console, or strengthen, which the heart de- 
voutly recognizes as the direct operation of God's spirit 
in communion with that of man. These seem to be the 
three main, perhaps the essential features, of what, for 
distinction's sake, is called the Christian consciousness ; 
this is the sentiment conveyed in those beautiful and uni- 
versally adopted Scripture phrases, the form of words in 
baptism, and the apostolic benediction ; and it is to this, 
as to the starting-point and resting-place of the Trinitarian 
dogma in the religious mind, that I particularly wish to 
call your attention. You will observe that I am speak- 
ing now of no matter of controversy, but only of an 
experience, or mode of thought and feeling, common to 
us all as Christians, but differently interpreted, according 
to our differing philosophies or forms of faith. 

Now, simply as a philosopher, I may interpret this 
form of experience into something very like the doctrine 
of the Trinity, as it is sometimes stated. And this is 
often done, — making one of those transcendental* modes 
of Orthodoxy to which I once alluded. For instance, it 
gratifies not only my religious feeling, but my metaphysi- 
cal fancy, to. regard God under this threefold relation 
towards his creatures, — as the Almighty, Infinite Cre- 
ator, the Sovereign of the Universe, the Father Ever- 
lasting ; next, as the fountain-head of all spiritual life and 
wisdom, which have flowed down, as it were, and be- 
come manifest to us in the flesh, or in the human life of 
Jesus of Nazareth, the author and medium of faith to so 
many affectionate disciples ; and thirdly, as the ever- 
present Spirit of truth and purity, to plead with the sin- 
ful heart, to console the sorrowful, to nerve and animate 



THE TRINITY. 49 

the soul to the endurance of hardship and the perfecting 
of its work. 

This form of thought, I say, may be grateful both to 
my religious feeling and my speculative taste. It may 
give a clearness and fulness to my thought of the Deity, 
and a reality to my sense of his presence, which I could 
not have to an equal degree in any other way. It makes 
what has been called a subjective, or philosophical, or 
modal trinity, — depending for its proof, not on Scrip- 
ture, but simply on the metaphysical taste and habit of 
the mind. Not but that the Divine nature is complete 
within itself, in whatever way we view it ; but this is the 
way in which it is best recognized by my human faculty. 
I distinctly feel and realize the religious meaning of the 
Scripture phrase, Father, Son, and holy spirit, or in- 
fluence. This makes up, in general terms, the sum of 
my religious thought ; that is, as far as the object of my 
homage and reverence is concerned. And I am thus 
full and distinct in stating it, partly because it shows how 
the religious sense preceded the dogmatic, and partly 
because in this we see the exact nature and extent of the 
true Scripture doctrine, as I understand it. So far we 
may go, no farther. As an object of reverent sentiment, 
we closely associate the three ; any speculative dogma 
beyond is unwarranted, I think, by any thing in the lan- 
guage of Scripture, and directly at variance with all 
we can understand of the laws and processes of human 
reason. 

To illustrate this last point more fully, I ask your 
attention to the three propositions which I shall seek to 
establish. The church docrine of the Trinity is set 
forth as the foundation and first article of the Orthodox 
creed ; it is maintainedlo be essential to a proper under- 
5 



50 THE TRINITY. 

standing of the Scriptures, and even to the soul's salva- 
tion ; it is vindicated as the only theory of the Divine 
nature which could make the work of redemption pos- 
sible ; and asserted, moreover, to be borne out and jus- 
tified by every variety of proof. I propose to show, 
first, that the evidence for it is utterly insufficient ; next, 
that it lias always been held or defined with confusion and 
contradiction among those professing to believe it ; and 
finally, that the bare assertion of it involves the mind in 
an inextricable dilemma between two opposing theories, 
either of which completely contradicts and subverts the 
proper meaning asserted to belong to it. 

The word Trinity (or triunity) signifies, as nearly as 
possible, " three in one," or rather, a Ct threefold one- 
ness "; and its meaning as a theological dogma is this : 
that in the Divine nature are three persons, or distinct, 
intelligent, conscious agents, each capable of separate 
offices and a separate will, each in some sense embody- 
ing the full perfection of the Deity, each separately 
a proper object of adoration, each having his own pecu- 
liar share in the great work of human redemption, — so 
distinct from one another, in short, as to be capable of 
counsel, intercourse, and sympathy, yet so mysteriously 
connected, that they form together one Infinite, Al- 
mighty, Eternal God. Of the ideas blended and con- 
fused in this conception I shall have more to say pres- 
ently ; but this short statement is enough to make the 
argument I am about to use intelligible. 

I. The evidence adduced in support of the Trinity, 
as thus described, is deficient and inconclusive. Let it 
be remembered, that I am not arguing now about a meta- 
physical trinity, which needs and claims no other argu- 
ment except as its own merit recommends it to the mind ; 



THE TRINITY. 51 

but about a doctrine claimed to rest on Scriptural au- 
thority and to be borne out by Scriptural proof. Neither 
am I reasoning now with those who profess (as the Cath- 
olics) to take it on the authority of a visible, infallible 
church. Their claim does not admit of argument, — at 
least here and now, — any more than that of those (if 
there be any) who profess to 'know its truth from the 
direct teaching of the Spirit. What I desire is to rea- 
son with Protestants, candid and serious minds, — with 
those who profess in the views they hold and enforce to 
go no further than the sense of Scripture w r ill guide them. 
Their attention I invite to my statement, that the evi- 
dence for the Trinity, said to be so strong, is unsubstan- 
tial, defective, and utterly insufficient. 

I might begin by alluding to the well-known fact, that 
many theologians, chiefly of the English Church, have 
acknowledged the insufficiency of the Scripture evidence, 
and so have insisted on the need of church authority to 
establish it. The doctrine itself they would not aban- 
don. It was inherited from the Roman Church, which 
professes it not from Scripture but from tradition ; and 
without the paramount authority of that Church, they 
thought, it must go to the ground. Accordingly, many of 
this class of theologians have embraced the Roman faith. 
But I do not insist upon this fact, because it might un- 
fairly warp and prejudice your minds. I only refer to it 
to show that Unitarians are not alone in contending that 
the doctrine is not sufficiently sustained by Scripture, — 
though these, indeed, think it is corroborated and implied 
there, w T hich we do not. But let this be borne in mind, 
that the burden of proof rests on that side. Our Ortho- 
dox friends offer to prove to us the Trinity out of Scrip- 
ture. What is the amount and value of that proof ? 



52 THE TRINITY. 

By their own acknowledgment, the doctrine is one, 
not of direct revelation, but of inference ; not explicitly- 
taught in Scripture, but only alluded to, and made out 
from comparison of various parts. Few persons who 
have not given particular attention to it are aware how 
scanty is the Scripture proof. The word Trinity itself, 
it is well known, is not in the Bible, and was not intro- 
duced till a hundred years after the time of Christ, and 
then, probably, to express something quite different from 
what we now mean by it. The only passages in the 
Bible where the three Divine persons are even supposed 
to be mc ntioned together are these : — 1. The formula of 
baptism (Matt, xxviii. 19), u in the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." This form of 
words is employed in every church where the rite is 
used, by ourselves as well as others, without any suspi- 
cion of a different meaning than what I before alluded to. 
2. The apostolic benediction (2 Cor. xiii. 14), u The 
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, 
and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all." 
This is used in Unitarian churches every Sunday ; and, 
to my mind, beautifully expresses those three features or 
elements of u the Christian consciousness." 3. The fa- 
mous passage (1 John v. 7), u There are three that bear 
record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy 
Spirit." This, to my mind, has no Trinitarian meaning 
at all, unless the metaphysical theory I spoke of before. 
It is well known by every critic to be a note or comment, 
not belonging to the Epistle ; and any person can see, 
by reading the passage carefully, that it breaks up the 
connection of the thought, and spoils the sense. 

Besides these three, the only passages I find referred 
to in an Orthodox article on the Trinity, for illustration, 



THE TRINITY. 53 

are these : — 1. " God said, Let us make man," &c. 
(Gen. i. 26.) 2. " My mouth it hath commanded, and 
his spirit it hath gathered them." (Isaiah xxxiv. 16.) 
3. " The Lord God, and his spirit, hath sent me." 
(Isaiah xlviii. 16.) 4. " We will come unto him [the 
obedient disciple], and make our abode with him." 
(John xiv. 23.) 5. " Lie to the Holy Ghost ; .... not 
unto men, but unto God." (Acts v. 3, 4.) 6. u The 
Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into 
the patient waiting for Christ" (2 Thes. iii. 5); that is, 
for his coming at the end of the world, which they 
thought was very near. These are all the passages re- 
ferred to, and therefore may be considered as the strong- 
est. Where would one find any hint of a Trinity in 
these ? 

The argument then, as most fairly stated by its sup- 
porters, is this : — The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 
are separately spoken of as God, or as having Divine 
offices and attributes ; and putting such expressions to- 
gether, (like the several partial answers to a complicated 
equation,) we obtain the doctrine, which then becomes 
the basis of our whole theory of redemption. The argu- 
ment is briefly answered. Respecting God the Father, 
of course there is no controversy. As for those passages 
which seem to identify Christ with God, they properly 
belong to the next Discourse, where the doctrine of his 
proper Divinity will be separately considered. And as for 
those which speak of the Holy Spirit as God, it is quite 
enough to say that this is no point of controversy between 
us. We never think, on our part, of the Holy Spirit as 
any thing separate from God himself, — only God regard- 
ed in a peculiar manner, as acting directly on the soul of 
man. Whether we translate the word spirit u breath" 
5* 



54 THE TRINITY. 

or " influence," it signifies the same thing ; and refers 
simply to that fact recognized in the religious emotion, 
— that point of devotional experience and conviction 
in every Christian soul. And in saying this, we have 
disposed of absolutely the whole of the Scripture testi- 
mony supposed to bear upon the Trinity. Thus it is 
reduced, so far as this branch of evidence is concerned, 
(and we admit no other,) to the single question of the 
Deity of Christ, — to be taken up and answered more 
fully at another time. 

A third point is very important, as further illustrating 
the feebleness of this evidence. Not only, as you have 
seen, or may easily ascertain, every single passage of 
Scripture may be and has been interpreted by the op- 
posers of this doctrine so as to conform easily to their 
views ; but, as we are told on the best authority, each 
single text has been conceded or explained away by 
some one critic, himself a firm believer in the doctrine. 
We need not quote a single Unitarian writer, — we 
may confine ourselves strictly to Trinitarian authorities 
to justify our own interpretations. This fact, often as- 
serted, has been abundantly proved by a volume in- 
dustriously compiled, in which each passage is taken 
up separately, and its Trinitarian interpretation set aside 
and refuted by some Orthodox authority. # 

Now I do not urge this point so strongly as some 
might do, because I know that men professing Ortho- 
doxy may very often be regarded in their own church 
as very loose and unsound critics. The fact, no doubt, 

* The Concessions of Trinitarians. Being a Selection of Extracts 
from the Writings of the Most Eminent Biblical Critics and Com- 
mentators. By John Wilson, Author of " Scripture Proofs and 
Scriptural Illustrations of Unitarianism." 8vo. pp. 614. 



THE TRINITY. 55 

is worth something ; but to me it is not as interesting as 
another, namely, that the classes of proof once relied 
on with almost equal assurance have been abandoned 
one by one, till now only an insignificant number of 
" proof-texts " remains, to which any candid reasoner 
is willing to apply. For instance, the plural name of 
God in Hebrew — once very much insisted on — is 
completely shown to be no argument at all, — the same 
thing being the case with Hebrew names of magistrates 
and other titles of honor. The number three — often 
found in the Old Testament, (as in the "three men" 
who appeared to Abraham, the " mouth of three wit- 
nesses," the u threefold cord not easily broken,") — and 
the ascription, " Holy, holy, holy," addressed to God 
in the Revelation, are no longer held to have a mystic 
meaning, or to hint at the trinity of persons in the God- 
head. The form of argument has very much changed, 
its scope being narrowed down to the few points al- 
ready spoken of. And the most confident assertions of 
the Trinitarian dogma made at the present day, (except 
by those who take it expressly on church authority,) 
are, after all, from the point of view of speculative phi- 
losophy, and not of Scriptural interpretation. With 
the theories of speculative philosophy, except what 
I said at the commencement of my exposition, I have 
nothing at present to do. 

II. I come, then, to my second proposition, which 
is, that the Trinity has always been interpreted in the 
most contradictory and uncertain way by those who 
have professed to hold it. 

As is well known to every reader of church history, 
the early centuries were full of controversy on the sub- 
ject of the ideas incorporated in this doctrine ; and it 



56 THE TRINITY. 

was not till " later than the middle of the fifth century " 
that the final shape was given to it in the Athanasian 
creed. And this controversy is by no means difficult 
to account for, if we suppose that the first Christians 
cherished simply the devout emotion, the living faith, 
the obedient conscience, and were content not to pro- 
nounce dogmatically on an abstract theory they had 
never heard of. But, as I think, it is perfectly unac- 
countable, if we suppose the doctrine of the Trinity 
to have been revealed. A single sentence, explicitly 
said and unequivocal in its language, would have put 
the whole question to rest, if such a sentence could 
have been quoted from Christ or his apostles, — which 
was never pretended, unless in the traditions of the 
Roman Church. And if he left his own nature unex- 
plained, except in vague and ambiguous hints, which 
either side interprets easily to its own pleasure, it 
seems very clear that the more entirely we believe in 
him, the more we shall be convinced that no such doc- 
trine can be an essential part of his religion. 

The force of this circumstance will be seen yet more 
clearly, when we consider that these first controversies, 
which brought the doctrine into shape, were with a very 
different purpose from the style of argument held now. 
The " plan of redemption," requiring the vicarious 
atonement and the suffering of a Divine being, was not 
the prominent idea, — if, indeed, it was ever thought of, 
— unless in some heretical, Gnostic theories. To 
satisfy the speculative tendency of the Greek philoso- 
phy, and to .vie with each other in doing supposed 
honor to Christ, — to assign to him (so to speak) a 
rank in the universe equivalent to the national sover- 
eignty claimed by the Jews for their Messiah, — seems 



THE TRINITY. 57 

to have been the motive uppermost. The coequal 
Divinity of the Spirit was an afterthought, unknown 
to the Nicene creed (A. D. 325), which (after a full 
statement of the Divine origin and nature of Christ) 
says briefly, " And [I believe] in the Holy Spirit," — 
which may be no more than the Divine influence on 
the soul. The Trinity, in its present dogmatic sense, 
— framed to meet the exigencies of the Orthodox idea 
of an infinite sacrifice being needed, — I do not think 
was once approached in the earlier centuries, unless in 
those schools of Oriental speculation called Gnosticism, 
which were one and all condemned as heretical. So 
that we have, as I conceive myself justified in assert- 
ing, a total diversity and contradiction, at the outset, 
between the ancient and modern Trinity, — the mean 
ing, intention, and fundamental idea of the doctrine be- 
ing quite oppositely held. 

And a few words will show the reason of this dif 
ference. In the earliest form given to the doctrine, 
we see the influence of three elements completely for- 
eign to the modern mind, — the vague Oriental The- 
osophy and idea of incarnation of the gods ; the Greek 
speculation, consisting very much in technical distinc- 
tions and verbal analysis, wholly divorced from objective 
scientific truth ; and the mystic symbolic representations 
of the Egyptian priesthood. But the last two in par- 
ticular were not so alien from the scholastic and mystic 
theology of the Middle Ages, and the Trinitarian dog- 
ma became thoroughly engrafted on the received creed. 
Still, as I have said, its meaning in course of time be- 
came quite different. The modern dogma retains the 
ancient form, but interpolates a new significance, and 
makes it merely the basis of the whole Orthodox 



58 THE TRINITY. 

scheme of redemption. From a primary, it becomes 
a secondary point of faith. The Athanasian creed 
says, that without belief in it, (the highest-toned state- 
ment of the Trinity,) a man shall " doubtless perish 
everlastingly" ; simply adding, that Christ " died for our 
salvation," and is to be our judge. Modern Orthodoxy 
says the Atonement is the main point of faith, — the 
other being subsidiary, and only essential because of 
that ; while the absolute need of the sacrifice and of 
belief in it is most explicitly set forth. * The abstract 
doctrine then, the reason of it noio, we find to be the 
real point of faith. This difference shows strikingly 
the change that has come about in the central signifi- 
cance of the Trinitarian dogma. 

But even among the supporters of the modern dogma, 
there is no more agreement in its interpretation. This 
was my reason for not insisting more strongly on the 
fact, that some one or other among them rejects the 
Trinitarian meaning from each single passage brought in 
support of it. But this diversity, while it weakens the 
force of that particular argument, is itself even more 
fatal to the doctrine. It cannot be so stated, that the 
mass of its supporters will accept the statement. Once 
get beyond a few vague and general phrases, which 
mean much or little according as we please, and which 
are worn threadbare by use, so as to be not much more 
than substitutes for thought instead of its expression, — 
you launch at once into a sea of contradictions. The 
Church (i. e. the " Orthodox " portion of it) has vi- 
brated from the first between the two horns of a dilem- 
ma, grasping either according as there seemed more 
peril from the other. 

* See Religious Encyclopaedia, Art. " Athanasius." 



THE TRINITY. 59 

The Athanasian creed says we must " neither confound 
the persons, nor divide the substance n ; and one or the 
other of these two has been done, in every attempt to 
make a plausible comment on the doctrine. One class 
of expounders is always accused of destroying the per- 
sonal identity of Christ, or else of detracting from his 
true dignity ; and the other, gf setting up three distinct 
gods on the throne of the universe, — a notion utterly 
strange and idolatrous to the general sense of Chris- 
tendom. 

I am not speaking now of the controversy between 
Trinitarians and Unitarians ; but of that among the Or- 
thodox themselves. Some dangerous heresy has always 
been detected, lurking under the disguise of every pos- 
sible interpretation ; and those have uniformly succeeded 
best who have simply stated the bald dogma, in the most 
paradoxical form possible, and have left the explanation 
as a " mystery," to shift for itself. Thus in the Eng- 
lish Church the debate has been plentifully waged, — 
South and Clarke, on the one hand, being regarded as 
Sabellian or Arian heretics, while Sherlock, Bull, and 
Waterland have the reputation of having even overstated 
the intrinsic paradox, in their bold and zealous defence 
of Orthodoxy. The Trinity of Coleridge, though he 
praises these last defenders of the faith,, and is even big- 
oted and intolerant in alluding to his old associates, the 
Unitarians, is looked on by some with no little suspicion, 
as a metaphysical, German, half-spurious Trinity, after 
all, savoring more of Schelling than of Paul or John. 
The most sincere believers have now and then to pro- 
test against the extreme dogmatism and extravagant lan- 
guage of some Trinitarian advocates, while very few 
would adopt the old test-phrases of Orthodoxy, — such 



60 THE TRINITY. 

as to call Mary the mother of God, or to say that the 
Father, or the Trinity, suffered on the cross. The 
whole tone of declaration on the subject has become 
softened down from dogmatism, and is tending towards 
mysticism or metaphysics. And it is not hazarding too 
much to say, that, if those professing Trinitarianism every- 
where were to make a frank and full explanation to one 
another of what they mean by it exactly, very many of 
them would find more real sympathy in the views of 
some heretics or dissenters than in the majority of those 
in their own ranks, 

III. I have but little time or space left for my re- 
maining proposition, — that the Trinitarian dogma in- 
volves the mind in an inextricable dilemma between two 
opposing theories, either of which completely contra- 
dicts and subverts the proper meaning asserted to belong 
to it. Neither, after what has been already said, is it 
necessary to illustrate this point at any length. Tndeed, 
I may appear to have anticipated in one way what I am 
about to repeat in another. In other words, what has 
just been shown as an historical fact, I wish to exhibit 
now as a logical necessity. And this I cannot prove, 
but only state. 

I have said that minds of a certain class find a satis- 
faction in representing to themselves the Divine nature 
as manifested in three different ways, or modes ; and 
this habit of thought I have called a modal or philosoph- 
ical trinity.^ —regarding God in his several capacities or 
attributes, as Creator, Teacher or Redeemer, and Sanc- 
tifier. Thisjway of thinking I have been careful to dis- 
tinguish from the Orthodox dogma with which it is some- 
times confounded ; and, indeed, the advocates of that 
dogma are as anxious as any one that one should not be 



THE TRINITY. 61 

taken for the other. I bring it up, partly to put that 
distinction in clearer light ; but chiefly to show that, in 
abandoning the doctrine, we do not abandon the religious 
truth which it may be held to represent. We do not 
divest the Deity of any of his functions, or remove him 
farther from the human soul. What seems to us bar- 
barous, scholastic, and unsound, in the language of the 
creeds, we freely reject. But our idea of God is not 
as if we took away those attributes of mercy and grace, 
or counsel, which are especially assigned to the second 
and third persons of the Trinity. The Divine nature, 
in its threefold or manifold modes of operation, express- 
es to us the entire sum of those ideas of majesty, ten- 
derness, and near communion which have ever been 
held to belong in peculiar to the Christian's God. 

But when we have said this, we have said all. This 
is the only concession or abatement we make in favor of 
a dogma so long associated with and shaping the Chris- 
tian belief. We not only refuse it wholly in its dogmat- 
ic meaning, but we say it cannot be stated intelligibly, 
so as to make it clear to our reason what it is we are 
called on to believe. We can go no farther than the 
religious or philosophical sentiment, declared before. 
If we advance a single step beyond, we fall at once 
upon that dilemma which the best minds in Christen- 
dom have vexed themselves in vain to solve, these thou- 
sand years. We say freely, that, not only it has not 
been solved, but in the nature of things it cannot be 
solved. We must either divide the substance or con- 
found the persons. Once get beyond the most vague 
statement of an intangible and inexplicable dogma, and 
one or the other of these two we must do. Either we 
have three gods for one, three, objects of worship in 
6 



62 THE TRINITY. 

every sense, three beings as distinct as Peter, James, 
and John, or else we simply regard the one God from 
three several points of view, to facilitate our imperfect 
comprehension, and our Trinity reduces itself to the 
harmless, convenient theory which has been stated be- 
fore, The only relief from this is in a form of words 
which may mean as much or as little as we please ; 
which says and unsays the same thing in a breath, — inter- 
changing the words three and one, one and three, more 
like a verbal legerdemain or sophistical play of words, 
like a riddle or a phrase studied to bewilder and deceive, 
than like a proposition meant to be understood We 
may say, if we will, that we believe in the words, es- 
pecially if repeated to us on an authority we respect ; 
but if you ask whether we believe what the words mean, 
we must frankly acknowledge we do not know what that 
is, and have never been able to ascertain. What has 
perplexed the best minds in Christendom, and set them 
at variance, we may well be excused if we refrain from 
the attempt to solve. 

And let us not be put off with the assurance that this 
is a mystery, which is above our power to comprehend. 
We know what a mystery is in things, and trust we 
have the modesty reverently to set limits to our intellect- 
ual pride or ambition. But a mystery of words, as we 
think, cannot be any thing more than an enigma or puz- 
zle. If you ask us reverently to adore the infinite and 
incomprehensible nature of God, we readily join with 
you. If you ask us to acknowledge our ignorance of 
the modes of his working, even in so simple a thing as 
the forming of a grain of sand, or the growth of a blade 
of grass, no less than in the majesty and glory of his 
boundless universe, it is what, with unfeigned humility, we 



THE TRINITY. 63 

must always do. It is only when a proposition contra- 
dictory or unintelligible in terms is offered us, and our 
belief of it demanded under that abused name of mys- 
tery, that we recoil, and say w T e must first know what 
the proposition means. With so plain an alternative be- 
fore us, of two interpretations, which we are told are 
equally false and perilous, we must say that, to our sim- 
pler understanding, there seems nothing left to believe at 
all. It is not true that where mystery begins religion 
ends ; but it is both true and necessary, that where mys- 
tery begins there is an end of human dogmatism, — there 
is an end of demanding assent to particular opinions and 
definitions, whether yours or mine. 

Such, then, in conclusion, is the position in which we 
find the Church dogma of the Trinity ; — a doctrine 
made up of inferences and obscurity ; established, by an 
uncertain and fluctuating majority, in the midst of contro- 
versy, doubt, and bitter feuds ; resting on so scanty and 
fragmentary evidence ; held differently and defended on 
different grounds from age to age, from place to place, 
from church to church ; constantly liable to the hazard 
of fatal misinterpretation on either hand ; trembling (as 
it were) always, in its best estate, in that position of 
unstable equilibrium between two contending heresies, 
each of which has the merit of being distinct and logical, 
w r hile it is doubtful whether this has any signification at 
all that can be expressed in words. I appeal to your 
good sense and candor, I will not say to pronounce the 
doctrine false, — believe and think as you will in regard 
to it, — but to say whether my assent is to be so sharp- 
ly demanded, whether we are to be exiled and accused 
of irreverence, and denied the Christian name, because 
we refuse it. 



64 THE TRINITY. 

Its evidence we regard as insufficient and unsound. 
Its meaning its best friends are not agreed upon. Its 
statement involves inextricable confusion, and an alterna- 
tive between two virtual denials of it. Can such a per- 
plexing mystery as that be a test of faith ? My reason- 
ing may not show it to be untrue ; but so much uncer- 
tainty, at least, is shown to rest upon it, that dogmatism 
is utterly out of place. Sharing, we trust, in the Chris- 
tian consciousness of believers, we do not deny the re- 
ligious significance which its terms perhaps imply, — God 
is our Father. Christ is our Teacher and Saviour. 
The Holy Spirit is our Comforter. But not in that 
vague, mysterious, unintelligible sense in which we are 
told that these three, as separate, coeternal, infinite be- 
ings, combine to make the Triune God. " To us,' ? in 
the words of Paul, 4C there is but one God, the Father, 
of whom are all things, and we in him ; and one Lord 
Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him*" 



DISCOURSE IV. 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

IF HE CALLED THEM GODS UNTO WHOM THE WORD OF GOD 
CAME, AND THE SCRIPTURE CANNOT BE BROKEN ; SAY YE 
OF HIM WHOM THE FATHER HATH SANCTIFIED AND SENT 
INTO THE WORLD, THOU BLASPHEMEST, BECAUSE I SAID, 

i am the son of god? — John X. 35, 36. 

The object of the last Discourse was to review the 
doctrine of the Trinity, — its evidence and its interpreta- 
tion ; and to show that, whatever may be claimed for its 
truth in the abstract possibility of things, yet it never has 
been and never can be so established as to serve for a 
sufficient basis to our faith. If what I then said was 
accurate, the Trinity cannot be used to prove the Deity 
of Christ ; my aim now is to show that the Deity of 
Christ cannot be used to prove the Trinity. Both are 
essential parts of the theory of Atonement, which is the 
keystone of the whole fabric, the characteristic feature 
of the whole plan. 

The Orthodox statement is, that Jesus of Nazareth 

was really and truly God ; that the Divine and human 

natures were mysteriously blended in his soul ; that hav- 
6 # 



66 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

ing existed from all eternity, u not made nor created, 
but begotten," coeternal with the eternal God, the per- 
sonal, conscious agent in the work of creation, he volun- 
tarily took the condition of humanity, and became son of 
a woman ; that, for the sake of fulfilling the only terms on 
which man could be pardoned and reconciled, he under- 
went the burden, humiliation, pain, and death necessary 
to the infinite sacrifice ; and that in rising from the dead, 
and ascending to heaven, he was only resuming the 
glorious state and robes of majesty, with which he had 
been invested through countless ages before. I omit 
whatever may seem contradictory or out of taste in the 
representations often made, only stating the essential 
doctrine in its plainest and simplest form, so as to begin 
with as distinct a notion as possible of what it means. 

Such, in general terms, is the proposition, or series of 
propositions, which I am to discuss. In many respects, 
all discussion on the subject must be unsatisfactory. 
The nature and office of Christ are almost always spoken 
of in terms which appeal rather to our religious affection 
than to our intellectual discernment. Partly from sin- 
cere veneration or love, partly from a wish not to be 
behindhand in an essential article of faith, different sects 
have contended how they should most highly exalt the 
claims and dignity of Christ. If they have called him 
the infinite and only God, it has been to make his place 
and claim paramount, and to enhance the greatness of his 
redeeming work. If, finding too little evidence for this, 
they have regarded him as a preexistent angelic being, a 
spirit of grea't power and honor, the first of created 
beings, the agent in the formation of the world, and only 
inferior to God himself, it has been from a shrinking 
dread of confounding him with the race of men. And 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 67 

if they have held to his pure and simple humanity, it 
has generally been with a protest first, that absolute 
freedom from moral imperfection set him apart suffi- 
ciently from other men, while his human thought, expe- 
rience, love, brought him into closer sympathy with us 
than if he had been of another order of beings, and gave 
him a more genuine, legitimate, and powerful influence 
on us, as our example. 

From this emulation in rendering due honor to the 
Saviour — so creditable in general to the loyalty and 
religious feeling of Christians — has resulted a state of 
mind which makes it very difficult to deal with the plain 
question of his nature, offices, and claims. In some 
respects it is more embarrassing than either of the other 
doctrines. If we speak of the metaphysical mystery of 
the Trinity, of the confusion of ideas involved in the 
doctrine of the Atonement, or Fall of Man, of the hor- 
rors in the popular notion of hell, or Satanic agency, 
we have something to appeal to in the common sentiment 
of Christians. But when we touch upon the Divinity of 
Christ, we are on ground appropriate and set apart to the 
exclusive sentiment of personal reverence ; and the most 
delicate and cautious handling of the argument will 
scarcely shield one from the imputation of doing wilful 
dishonor to the Son of God, and wantonly affronting the 
religious feeling of all Christians. 

Still, a service is due to each man's understanding of 
the simple truth. And, whatever the delicacy and skill 
required, however strongly this peculiar difficulty of the 
task may press, yet, believing that insincerity here is 
worst dishonor, that an exaggerated and contradictory 
claim is most adverse to the simplicity of Christ, and 
above all, that our whole religious belief is vitiated and 



68 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

confused by error on this point, or any other, when wil- 
fully and timidly adhered to, I proceed to the subject 
under review. The Deity of Christ is intimately and 
vitally connected, as doctrine, with a religious system 
which we hold to be false and injurious, and alien from 
his spirit. This must be our justification in undertaking 
a task which to some will appear a studious detraction 
from the dignity of Christ, and is in some respects alien 
and distasteful to our own private feeling.* 

First, however, let me make even more explicitly the 
disclaimer which I urged in the last Discourse. We 
leave to the religious sentiment complete and undisputed 
possession of its own ground. There is a region there 
with which we have no disposition to interfere. The 
devout spirit, the experience of prayer, has a sphere and 
language of its own, inalienable. On that ground our 
criticism and logic shall not tread. What the grateful 
heart recognizes, in its simple, strong emotion, shall re- 
main untouched. The ascription of praise and homage, 
the personal sense of gratitude, the appeal, the love, the 
veneration, which the religious mind renders in unques- 
tioning sincerity to its Saviour, we will not refuse or 
blame, 

Neither will we intrude our own interpretation of that 
sentiment, to explain away this or change the meaning of 
that. A part of the homage we pay to Christ has be- 
come thoroughly blended with the religious sentiment 

* Not to quarrel about terms, I shall generally use the words 
"Divinity" and " Deity" in the same sense, although this is quite 
a needless concession, and one which many Unitarians would pro- 
test against. It is proper to add, therefore, that these generally 
insist on Christ's Divinity, as belonging to his commission and work, 
while they reject his Deity, as belonging to his absolute and intrinsic 
nature. 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 



and character. Its appropriate place seems to be in 
the province of devotion. We have no wish to super- 
sede the language or the sentiment which has become 
as it were part of our religious nature, — at least, part 
of our culture and habit. Only, when it is taken from 
the sphere of reverence into that of logic, when the 
emotion is stiffened into a dogma, and the breathed 
affection becomes petrified in a creed, when the warm 
declaration of devout feeling is arrested and frozen to a 
solid shape, and we are told that must be our historical 
or theological opinion, — then we demur, and claim our 
right to our own better exposition, as we think it, to 
serve as the basis of the same faith and hope and love. 

For the sake of simplicity, I shall confine myself at 
present to the single doctrine, as I have stated it. The 
diversity of opinion is so great among those who dis- 
sent from it, and the shades of opinion are so many and 
so nicely discriminated, between the high Orthodox be- 
lief and the other extreme of rationalism, that it would 
be unfair to take any one person's statement as the 
alternative, or make the whole various body responsible 
for his assertions. Towards the close, I may allude 
again to some of these diversities, for further illustra- 
tion. I have now to do only with the single proposition, 
that Christ is God. Of this I shall attempt to show, 
first, that it rests on the wrong, or at least doubtful, inter- 
pretation of a few passages of Scripture, while it is op- 
posed by its general sense and spirit ; and next, that, in 
all the forms in which it has been held, it fails of the 
great aim of religious enlightenment, while it is unes- 
sential to the Christian faith or hope. Its failure, at any 
rate, to meet the exigencies of the theory of Atone- 
ment, will be considered at another time. 



70 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

I. It will save confusion and misunderstanding, if I 
begin with a brief view of the Scripture language in 
reference to Christ. It is not to be concealed or denied, 
that the writers of the New Testament speak of him in 
very peculiar terms. In general, — and from this an 
argument has been derived for the genuineness*of these 
writings, — we may trace a marked difference in the 
tone and style from the first period to the last of the 
New Testament history. In the Gospels, our Saviour 
is scarcely mentioned, except by his proper name, 
Jesus. If we omit one or two places where the word 
Christ refers to the office simply, and not to him at 
all in person, it occurs in all the Gospels put together 
only as many times as in the single Epistle to the Ro- 
mans, which is only as long as the shortest Gospel, and 
is occupied with a different class of subjects, and so 
has less occasion to mention him. And in every 
case, without any straining of the words, u Jesus " 
may mean the man, and u Christ " the office ; while 
afterwards, and among those who (as Paul) had not 
known him personally, the word Christ tends more and 
more to become an integral part of his proper name. 
This circumstance will appear from/ the slightest exam- 
ination of the Testament or of a Concordance. 

And we see, in general, as in the lapse of time he 
was more and more viewed in relation to his office, and 
less in his pure and simple individuality, that epithets of 
honor came to be more commonly added to his name. 
The title " Lord " * occurs first in the book of Acts, in 
direct connection with his name, and is frequently used 

* The vagueness and generality of " lord " and "worship," as the 
object and act of homage, are seen in Matthew xviii. 26. 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 71 

by Paul. And all the characteristic expressions refer- 
ring to him, (such as " in Christ," " for," " against," 
u by," " with Christ,") in connection with our religious 
life and hopes, occur in the later writings of the Tes- 
tament. They came spontaneously from the grateful 
and religious feeling of the disciples, which seemed to 
bring them most near to him. And they acquired that 
vagueness, spirituality, and elevation which make them 
seem applicable to God, only after a considerable lapse 
of time had intervened. Indeed, so strikingly is this 
the case, that it occasioned serious difficulty to the first 
Orthodox interpreters ; and some of them found no 
better way of accounting for it, than to say it was 
necessary his Divinity should be concealed while he 
was on earth, lest it should come to the knowledge of 
his subtle and malignant enemy, Satan, and work harm 
to the truth. The doctrine, as they supposed, was 
studiously hidden, and not revealed. It was only an 
afterthought that Jesus himself had plainly declared it 
to his disciples, — still less, in the words of our existing 
Gospels. 

A second point is equally evident, and equally im- 
portant, as throwing light on the New Testament phra- 
seology. It is, that the name Christ (which came by 
degrees, as we have seen, to be his ordinary designa- 
tion) signifies not so much his person as his office, — or 
rather the peculiar and intimate relation in which he 
stood towards God. The word Christ (or Messiah) 
means u anointed." At first, and among the Jews, 
it meant consecrated to the particular national office of 
the Messiah ; but by degrees a sense more spiritual and 
appropriate came to be attached to it, which we may 
explain somewhat thus. It is, indeed, the sentiment of 



72 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

all spiritual religion, that " in God we live and move 
and have our being." But most men are conscious of 
an unwillingness or an unworthiness, which separates and 
estranges them from him. And the baptism or ''anoint- 
ing " of the Spirit, (signified in the name Christ,) seems 
to imply that fulness of the Divine power or presence, 
that immediate, controlling, pervading influence of the 
Deity upon the soul of Jesus, which made him, in the 
reverent affection of his followers, wholly apart from 
and above the ordinary race of men, — the special 
representative, so to speak, of our religious nature and 
capacity, — the mediator between God and men, — 
the image or representation of the glory of the Divine 
attributes, especially of mercy, justice, and love, — in 
a new and peculiar sense the Son of God. All, says 
Schleiermacher, are children of God, — Jesus only, 
his Son. Such was evidently the feeling the early 
Christians entertained towards Jesus Christ ; and they 
expressed it in a variety of ways, with as much 
strength and fervor as they could, in those many 
phrases which have come to be so closely associated 
with his name. 

Nor in this, as I conceive, were they departing from 
the idea of his simple and proper humanity. There is 
no break, no abrupt change, no sudden transition, from 
their first thought of him, as the carpenter's son of 
Nazareth, to their strong and emulous ascriptions of 
all possible dignity and glory to their risen Lord, — 
nothing but the gradual progress of their thought, as 
just described, *as he became more and more blended 
with their religious experience and hope. And, at any 
rate, whatever was the nature of that relationship to 
God which they ascribed to him, it was what it were 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 73 

no impiety in them to aspire for, themselves. There 
might, indeed, be a peculiarity in position, which made 
him what no other could be to the world and them ; 
but those spiritual gifts which were " the hiding of 
his power," it was their privilege and their duty to 
seek. Thus Jesus himself is represented (John xvii. 
22) as saying, " The glory which thou gavest me I have 
given them"; i. e. the intimate sense and blessedness of 
the Divine presence. As he says, " I and my Father 
are one," so he prays cc that they all may be one, as 
thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also 
may be one in us." Peter (1 Pet. iv. 14) encourages 
the disciples in persecution, by assuring them that " the 
spirit of glory and of God resteth on them," as on 
Jesus at his baptism ; and John (1 Ep. i. 3), says, 
"Our fellowship is with the Father"; and again (iii. 2), 
" When he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we 
shall see him as he is " ; and again (ii. 20), u Ye have 
an unction [anointing] from the Holy One, and ye know 
all things." Paul desires (Eph. iii. 19) that the disci- 
ples u might be filled with all the fulness of God " ; 
and Peter (2 Pet. i. 4) says the Gospel promises are 
given, " that by these ye might be partakers of the Di- 
vine nature," — thus applying to the disciples generally 
almost the very phraseology which Orthodoxy applies to 
Christ, and using in this connection the strongest ex- 
pressions that can be quoted to prove his absolute 
Divinity. 

One other expression has given peculiar difficulty to 
interpreters, but seems easily explained, as containing a 
slight modification of the same idea. It is the title Lo- 
gos, or Word, as used in the first chapter of John. I 
cannot go into an exposition now of the style of philos- 
7 



74 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

ophy which made these expressions easy and familiar 
once, obscure as they maybe now. Nor is this at all 
necessary. Though the expression be a technical one, 
the thing expressed is a simple religious sentiment or 
idea. It is enough to say, that this form of speech was 
naturalized among the Jews in Egypt about the time of 
Christ ; and that the introduction to John's Gospel (we 
are told) can be matched word for word, except where 
Jesus is personally spoken of, out of the writings of 
these Jews. As we shall see by careful attention, 
every other explanation is confused and obscure, except 
that which makes the " Word " signify simply the ac- 
tive spirit or energy of God ; or rather, the utterance or 
expression of God in his works, and especially in the 
soul of man. The phrase occurs more than sixty times 
in the Old Testament, often with a kindred meaning; as 
in this passage, — " By the word of the Lord were the 
heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of 
his mouth " ; besides (a similar idea) where it is said, 
u God spake, and it was done," &c. Its significa- 
tion is almost identical with our word u inspiration," 
taken in the broadest sense ; and it may be regarded as 
a refined, less material way of speaking of the acts of 
God. 

And if we understand it simply of the Divine spirit, 
energy, reason, or creative word, we shall find its mean- 
ing clear and plain enough. It is that Divine power or 
wisdom, manifest in the works of creation, and in the 
soul of man. And because that Divine spirit was es- 
pecially manifest in the life of Jesus, and this was felt 
to be, in a special sense, a moral revelation of God, 
therefore this phrase is used to introduce fitly the story 
of his life, and prepare us to understand his marvellous 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 75 

influence on all who knew him. So far as there is a 
consecutive train of thought in the passage, it seems to 
be, that God has made a threefold revelation or expres- 
sion of himself; namely, of his power (in nature), his 
wisdom (in the soul), and his love (in Christ) ; or, as 
we should say, by his providence in nature, in history, 
and in the life of Jesus. A moral revelation could only 
have been made in such a life ; which accordingly stands 
to us as the representative or declaration of precisely 
those attributes which seem least clearly revealed in the 
other manifestations of the Infinite. After speaking of 
the great work of creation, done by the wisdom, energy, 
or creative word of God, — the Almighty himself, and 
no inferior being, for " the Word was God," — and al- 
luding to its manifestation in the soul of man, and his 
spiritual or providential history, the writer goes on to 
say, — " The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among 
us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only 
begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." To 
one who enters at all into the spirit of that Gospel, or 
understands, however faintly, the sentiment of affection- 
ate veneration the disciples felt towards Jesus, — who 
first had opened their eyes to the glory of God's creation, 
and made them aware of their spiritual destiny and the 
abiding presence of God, — there will seem no difficulty 
in such words as these. 

After this exposition of the general tone and spirit of 
the New Testament language in respect to Christ, there 
will be little difficulty, I apprehend, in the few pas- 
sages that have not already been considered. I men- 
tion them more to show their scanty number, and the 
slenderness of evidence for any thing more than has 
already been shown respecting the honors paid to Christ 



76 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

in the Testament, than for any weight they have in sway- 
ing our opinion. 

In the Hebrew Scriptures there are two passages 
which have an accidental connection with this argument. 
1. Isaiah vii. 14, where the name " Immanifel " is 
applied to the expected Jewish prince, or some other 
child, meaning "God with us," — as Elijah signifies 
"God the Lord," and Israel "Prince of God," and 
Timothy " Glory of God." There is nothing in the 
passage to make us suspect its referring to Christ, ex- 
cepting that it is gratefully quoted by Matthew, to illus- 
trate the new deliverance through Jesus. 2. Isaiah ix. 
6, — " His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, 
the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father." Of course 
this could not mean Jesus, — for the name given is the 
Father, not the Son, and the best critics are agreed in 
applying these titles of honor to the triumphant reign of 
the pious and prosperous Hezekiah ; and it was not till 
comparatively late, that it was even suggested that they 
might be said of Christ. It is plain to see, by the con- 
nection, that they were spoken of a temporal and warlike 
prince, not of a spiritual teacher. 

In seven places of the New Testament, and only 
seven, the name God has been asserted to be given to 
Jesus. Of these, two are set aside by the critics as 
not belonging to the true text,"* viz. : — 1. Acts xx. 
28, " The church of God, which he hath purchased 
with his own blood." It should be, " church of the 
Lord," or " master." The phrase " blood of God " is 
abhorrent to Christian feeling, and was not used till the 
ninth century, the darkest of the Dark Ages. 2. 1 Tim. 
iii. 16, " God was manifest in the flesh," — a phrase 
easily explained by what I have just said of the Word, 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 77 

as the declaration or manifestation of God ; but the true 
text is " he who," or " which." 

Three others depend on grammar and punctuation, 
and are as easily rendered one way as the other. These 
are, — 1. Rom. ix. 5, which can be rendered several 
ways ; perhaps the simplest is, " Christ came, w 7 ho is 
above them all ; God be blessed for ever " ; or, u God 
who is over all be blessed for ever." 2. Heb. i. 8, 
which is quoted literally from the Greek Alexandrian 
translation of the Old Testament (Psalm xlv. 6), and 
which the best Hebrew scholar in the world translates, 
" Thy throne is of God for ever," i. e. established by 
God. It was first addressed to Solomon, on his mar- 
riage with the princess of Egypt. 3. 1 John v. 20, 
u This is the true God, and eternal life," — w 7 hich may 
or may not refer to Christ, just as we choose, not 
even being in the same sentence where his name is men- 
tioned. 

Our seven texts, then, are reduced to two, — abso- 
lutely the only ones with which Unitarians find any dif- 
ficulty ; and that difficulty is only as to the frame of 
mmd in which they were said or written. 1. John xx. 
28, where Thomas, in his excitement and surprise at 
recognizing Jesus, says, " My Lord and my God," — 
as if a man in that state of mind, who the minute be- 
fore had declared his entire unbelief of Jesus' resurrec- 
tion, could be the chief witness to the most momentous 
truth of the Gospel ! Some suppose it is an ejaculation 
addressed to God, as if calling him to witness his new 
faith ; others that the word is addressed to Jesus in the 
qualified sense in which it is used in my text, " He called 
them gods unto whom the word of God came." Either 
way, it is of too trifling value as evidence to create a 
7* 



78 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

doubt or justify a controversy. 2. Last of all, and cer- 
tainly most difficult, if we wish to know the precise 
shade of meaning implied, is the passage (Phil. ii. 6) 
which says of Jesus, that, " being in the form of God, 
he thought it not robbery to be equal with God." It is 
in the course of an exhortation to Christian humility. 
We are to be like Christ in this respect. What ! in as- 
piring to absolute equality with God ? Certainly not ; 
but just the opposite, — for the word itself means just 
as well, that he u did not make it his ambition " to be 
equal with God, — i. e. to claim divine honor, such as 
was given to Greek heroes and Roman emperors. Paul 
was writing to Greeks under the Roman rule ; and it is 
thus that he contrasts the impious ambition of their pre- 
tended gods and heroes with the simple majesty of Jesus, 
who, " godlike "as he was, ("in the form of God,") 
never aspired to that sort of worship from his followers 
which their superstitious devotees claimed for them. 

These are all the passages ever supposed to name 
Christ as God. Of the expressions, u Lord," u wor- 
ship," u fulness of God" in him, I have spoken already. 
If he says, cc He that hath seen me hath seen the Fa- 
ther," on the Trinitarian interpretation it would cer- 
tainly be to u confound the persons," and make no dif- 
ference between Father and Son. He evidently means, 
that in the human qualities of dignity, mercy, love, we 
see all we can see of God, and have only to add the 
infinity of the Divine nature to the beauty of the spirit- 
ual traits. The only other passage of any moment is 
that (Col. i. » 16) where it is twice said, " All things 
were created by him." The prepositions used are com- 
monly translated " in " and u through," — which would 
materially alter the sense ; but I am inclined to think 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 79 

the whole paragraph is a parallel, and that the sense is, 
" Christ is like God in this ; that as in him (God) are 
established the glory and strength of the outward world, 
so in him (Christ), the head of the Church, are found 
the source of spiritual authority and the fountain-head of 
religious truth." 

I have taken up these " proof-texts," as they are 
called, one by one, to show in detail what I asserted in 
general, — that the doctrine of the Deity of Christ 
rests on a false, or at least doubtful, interpretation of a 
very few passages, and is opposed by the general sense 
and spirit of the Testament. Not that these critical dis- 
cussions have any weight in influencing my own belief; 
but they are necessary to avoid misunderstanding, and 
to interpret special points into conformity with the whole. 
Nor that I contend for the precise expositions I have 
given them ; of course, our particular interpretation is 
shaped by our general belief, and not the reverse. Critics 
equally learned and candid will read such things differ- 
ently. If the Deity of Christ could be proved on other 
grounds, doubtless these passages might be so explained 
as to accord with it. But this is the very thing which 
cannot be proved. But I do not see how any one can 
doubt that the sense and spirit of the Testament generally 
make Jesus wholly different from God. There seems 
(saving the few doubtful sentences) no confusion, no 
room for varying opinion. And, indeed, the only real 
reluctance to regarding Christ as a" mere man " (as is 
sometimes depreciatingly said) comes, I think, from the 
morbid and false view of human nature studiously fos- 
tered by the prevalent theory of Christianity. This I 
shall have occasion to review presently ; at present, it is 
enough to allude to the simple fact. 

Take the attributes we ascribe to God, and see how 



80 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

the life of Christ expressly contradicts them. Eternity, 
or necessary existence : he " came forth from the Fa- 
ther." Omnipresence: he u goes his way to him that 
sent him." Omnipotence : he says, u Power is given 
me "; " Of myself I can do nothing"; " My Father is 
greater than I." Omniscience : u Of that day knoweth 
not the Son, but the Father only." Absolute perfection : 
u But one is good, that is God." Self- sufficiency : he 
prays, acknowledges his dependence, and says, " I thank 
thee that thou hast heard me." These examples are 
enough. I quote them, not for proof, but merely as 
specimens of the Gospel style. They show, as plainly 
as can be shown, that the general sense of Scripture is 
utterly hostile to the Orthodox theory ; and that, without 
attributing strange dissimulation and ambiguity to the 
" Son of Man," as he almost always called himself, it is 
impossible to think of him as being at the same time the 
Infinite God, absolute in knowledge and supreme in 
power. 

The verbal jugglery by which we are told of two 
natures in him, a Divine and a human, — if it means any 
thing more than that the Divine spirit interpenetrates 
and is the sustaining life of every human soul, — has no 
countenance and can find no excuse in the Testament. 
Make Jesus in a peculiar sense the representative to us 
of that divine or spiritual element common to us all in 
less degree, and you make his claims intelligible, the 
language of Scripture plain. Go beyond, though but a 
step, and you bring darkness and confusion, destroy the 
simplicity of the word, and perplex yourself with a vain 
and complicated theory, for which there is no justification 
in reason, Scripture, or the religious sense. # 

* I omit the argument respecting the preexistence of Christ. 1. Be- 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 81 

II. Thus defective and doubtful as the evidence is, at 
best, which by means of Scriptural assertion or interpre- 
tation makes Jesus identical with God, the doctrine has 
yet been supposed to be borne out by other proofs, and 
justified on other grounds, independent of these. Of 
course, no other mode of direct proof is legitimate except 
the Scripture testimony. But it has been assumed to 
meet a great want of our minds, which otherwise could 
have no sure knowledge of God, and of our hearts, 
which could have no sure avenue of approach to him 
but through this medium. I have, then, to show that 
this assertion is incorrect ; that mind and heart do not 
require such a doctrine of the Saviour ; or, in the words 
of the proposition before stated, that it u fails of the 
great aim of religious enlightenment, while it is unessen- 
tial to the Christian faith or hope." 

The doctrine of Christ's Divinity, while it certainly 
bewilders and perplexes the mind, affords us no more 
certain knowledge of God. It is an error to suppose, 
that, by bestowing the name of what is unknown on a 
familiar object, we become better acquainted with its real 
character. To call charcoal diamond may be said to 
have some degree of scientific truth ; but, familiar as the 
one may be, it will not help explain the properties of 
the other, unless we know that too. No one, surely, will 
deny that Jesus lived and was known among his contem- 

cause it has nothing to do with the question of his Divinity, and 
Unitarians are of various minds about it. 2. The three or four 
passages which seem to imply it are no more explicit than those 
which speak of men as u known," " glorified," ct favored," &c, be- 
fore their birth (Jer. i. 5; Rom. viii. 30; 2 Tim. i. 8, 9). 3. Because 
the general speculative notion of the preexistence of souls would 
naturally, if shared by John, be applied peculiarly to his supposed 
sinless and glorified preexistent state. 



82 - THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

poraries as a man. As such he was loved, welcomed, 
followed, entreated ; as such he was arrested, tried, ac- 
cused, and put to death ; and even his nearest friends 
were so far from suspecting a superior nature in him, 
that on his death they fell into complete despair, as if 
his project of restoring " the kingdom of Israel" had 
wholly failed. Evidently, then, during his ministry he 
had displayed only the qualities, attributes, characteristics, 
of a man. It was only human traits, such as benevo- 
lence, justice, moral courage, devoutness, that he exhib- 
ited, however set off and exalted by superiority of char- 
acter or marvellousness of works. Where, then, do we 
find any relief to our perplexity, or light to our doubts of 
God, by being told that his nature was mysteriously pres- 
ent in that soul ? If this signifies that the benevolence, 
justice, moral purity, spirituality, of the Divine character 
are akin to such qualities in the human soul, and that in 
this way Jesus, most pure and exalted of mankind, was 
" the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express 
image of his person," what is it but to make more 
vivid our sense of the Divine attributes by a process of 
mind perfectly understood before, only better illustrated 
and further carried out ? Or what is it, again, but to 
acknowledge ourselves unable, as indeed we are, to con- 
ceive of God otherwise, excepting from what is most 
pure and perfect in man ? Of course, it must always be 
so. We cannot go beyond the region of our experience. 
We must take what we know as the hint, and project 
from that our idea of what we do not know. And just so 
far as Jesus displays to us new traits of excellence, or 
makes us conscious of new germs of spiritual life in our- 
selves, just so far he brings us to a better knowledge of 
God. This is a truth of reason and experience, — one 
peculiarly illustrated in him. 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 83 

But if we go any farther, we confuse ourselves by 
words without a meaning. The germ, the hint, the 
suggestion of a better moral knowledge of God, we find 
in the life of Jesus. But as a matter of definition, of 
accurate scientific knowledge, w 7 e are as much to seek as 
ever. Every definition we can frame, every phrase we 
use, every conception we entertain of God as distinct 
from man, gives us equally God as distinct from the Jesus 
of the Gospels. I say this not hastily or irreverently, or 
in any want of honor towards the Son of God. Every 
person claiming to be a Christian gives Jesus precisely 
the honor he understands him to claim. I am simply 
stating a contradiction which occurs necessarily in every 
(however Orthodox) representation of Christ. Every 
form of words is used by which implicitly or explicitly he 
can be distinguished from the Infinite God. Except for 
a few express assertions now and then to the contrary, 
not a sermon or hymn or prayer but implies the differ- 
ence and inferiority of Christ in respect to God. Nine 
tenths of every Christian service are strictly Unitarian ; 
only in the other tenth is the Trinitarian reservation 
made. And if this difficulty is evaded by saying that he 
was the human image of God, a finite representation of 
the infinite, the evasion is simply a contradiction in terms ; 
for infinity is the very distinctive essence and character- 
istic of the Divine in itself, the only way you can repre- 
sent it as differing from the human. The hypothesis of 
a double nature is an awkward and groundless fabrica- 
tion, except as signifying the blending of the Divine and 
human element in every soul. For we are all children 
of God, as well as children of the earth, and share the 
very immortality and spiritual essence of our Heavenly 
Father, as well as the corruption of mortal flesh. 



84 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

And the other hypothesis, that the Divine Spirit took 
the place in him of a human soul, is no more satisfactory. 
If it means that his will, affection, thought, were abso- 
lutely and personally identical with those of God, — that 
he had no individuality as a man, and no human affec- 
tion other than the love the Infinite feels for all his off- 
spring, — that the volition which prompted a word of 
sympathy or rebuke, at the very same moment and in 
the sphere of the same consciousness, was controlling 
the movements of the stars and the great course of 
Providence, — then, for so stupendous an assumption, a 
very different warrant from any we can find is needed, 
and a degree of evidence from the nature of the case 
unattainable. Any thing less than this is either the most 
unintelligible mysticism, — that doctrine which merges 
all human thought and will in the universal Deity, and so 
again confounds God, Christ, and man too in one vague 
identity, — or else is simply the doctrine which I have 
partly illustrated before, of the Divine presence in the 
human soul. Even if I went so far as to allow that the 
New Testament writers, or the early Christians, illus- 
trated their idea of Christ as the image of God by the 
familiar Oriental idea of an incarnation of the Deity, 
(such as we find in all accounts of the Hindoo mythol- 
ogy,) still I should hold that their real sense and mean- 
ing was simply as I have already explained, when speak- 
ing of the baptism or anointing of the Spirit, and the 
spiritual presence of God in every faithful soul. 

And finally, I maintain that such a view is all that is 
essential to ^our religious faith or hope. After all, the 
doctrine of Christ's Divinity has its strongest hold in the 
devout heart, and as being supposed to meet a peculiar 
religious want. And, in a certain modified sense, this is 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 85 

so far from being denied, that it is expressly asserted 
and vindicated in the whole course of my argument. 
The real want is, to be assured of God's presence and 
aid to ourselves. In the dark era of superstition and 
distress, near a thousand years after the birth of Christ, 
when the earth seemed desolate and forsaken, as if God 
had abandoned it utterly to confusion and crime, — then 
it was a relief, a point of joyful, enthusiastic faith, to 
be assured of the "real presence " in the sacramental 
host. God, it was reverently believed, was bodily 
seen, felt, handled, tasted, in the bread and cup of com- 
munion. This was the sign men craved and welcomed 
then, of his abiding presence, — their proof that he had 
not deserted his children. And then it was that Christ 
was most closely identified with God, in terms that 
would seem shocking and blasphemous to us now, 
though then the utterance of sincere religious affection 
and faith. The great truth that God never deserts us, 
that he is still with us, though we see and know him 
not, could be expressed then in such symbols only as 
appealed to men's grosser senses, and in terms of which 
the paradox best stated the amazing and incredible truth. 
From a similar feeling, men have clung to a belief in 
the Deity of Christ, lest otherwise they should seem to 
lose their hold on God, — who was thus brought com- 
paratively near, and into the compass of their affection- 
ate thought. But the simpler statement of his Divine 
nature, in that sense in which we can be partly con- 
scious of the same in us in our better moods of mind, 
not only is quite as near (as I think far nearer) the 
Testament phraseology, but it does not perplex or con- 
front our reason ; it does not bewilder our mind ; it 
does not repel by a dogma, when it should cheer and 
8 



86 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

comfort by an element of faith and love. Do you say 
it is a degradation to the pure and exalted soul of Jesus 
to bring him thus within the range of our personal sym- 
pathy, into the circle of our human brotherhood ? Ask 
yourself, first, whether your own view of humanity, 
of man the child of God, made in the image of God, 
has not been degraded and profaned ; whether the 
knowledge of man's guilt has not clouded your mind 
with despair for man ; whether it is not your distrust in 
the promise of God for all, your unbelief in the Divine 
influence and presence with all, that makes you un- 
willing to acknowledge Christ as perfectly and simply 
a brofher-man. Renew your hope ; revive your faith 
in God's universal providence ; and you will no longer 
think it strange and a profanation to represent Christ 
as the Son of Man. The profanation will rather be 
in the unwillingness to speak of man as the Son of God. 
The Divine presence in nature and the soul, — the 
countenance of love and pity with which God looks on 
us, — the merciful dealing of Providence towards us, — 
the devout rapture that assures us we are not forgotten 
or despised of Him without whom not a sparrow falls to 
the ground, — these will be the object of your thought. 
The religious want will be amply met and satisfied, ac- 
cording as you cherish such a sentiment as this. And 
then it will seem the most natural and beautiful thing in 
the world, that he who for long ages has stood foremost 
in men's thought as the most perfect representative of 
the Divinity, who has not only been honored as the Son 
of God, but worshipped in affectionate faith as the In- 
finite One himself, — that he should be regarded as dif- 
fering from us, not in kind, but in degree ; as a brother- 
man, whose faith was so lofty and serene, whose thought 



THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 87 

so clear, whose mind so free of evil stain, that he stood, 
as it were, within the very border of the spiritual world, 
and nothing was between his soul and God. 

As the very Infinite, his w T ords can have no sincere 
meaning, — his suffering must be unreal, — his tempta- 
tion a dramatic show, — his prayers an insincerity, — 
his sorrowing affection an assumed disguise, — his ex- 
ample of no application to our mortal state. Analyze 
your own thought of him, and you will find it resolves 
itself very much into what I have said. Whether Or- 
thodox or Unitarian, — adhering to a form of words as- 
serting his Divinity, or trusting to your general regard 
for him, and sense of what the Scriptures teach, — in 
point of fact, the sentiment of all involves the same fun- 
damental view. A hundred differences there may be in 
points of criticism, in particular opinions here and there ; 
but the legitimate, true, and only sense in which it is 
possible to conceive of Jesus as the Son of God is 
as representative of the spiritual faculty in ourselves, 
and as exalting our own nature by a nearer moral like- 
ness to our Father. 

Forced and strained beyond this simple truth, the 
doctrine is one reposing on insufficient evidence, and in 
the highest degree confounding to our reason. He is 
taken from the sphere of our sympathy, and put in a 
position merely official towards us. An arbitrary and 
artificial array of cc offices " is assigned him, in place 
of the free, natural, spontaneous exercise of spiritual 
power by a gloriously endowed and sincerely faithful 
soul. The charge of assuming such a character he re- 
pels as explicitly as possible, in the words which best 
express his true spiritual relation toman and God: — 
" If he called them gods unto whom the word of God 



88 THE DEITY OF CHRIST. 

came, how say ye of him whom the Father hath sanc- 
tified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, be- 
cause I said, I am the Son of God ? " His own 
exposition of his lofty claim, " I and my Father are 
one," is when he prays for all his disciples throughout 
the world, " that they all may be one ; as thou, 
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may 
be one in us ; that the world may believe that thou 
hast sent me." 



DISCOURSE V. 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

IF, WHEN WE WERE ENEMIES, WE WERE RECONCILED TO GOD B^ 
THE DEATH OF HIS SON, MUCH MORE, BEING RECONCILED, WE 
SHALL BE SAVED BY HIS LIFE. — Romans V. 10. 

In the two preceding Discourses, I have endeavoured 
to show that the doctrines of the Trinity and Deity 
of Christ, whatever their possible truth in the abstract 
reality of things, cannot be so established and proved as 
to serve for a basis to our theory of the Divine govern- 
ment. The evidence is too imperfect, the interpreta- 
tions too contradictory, to them both, to suffer them to 
be either a sufficient or an intelligible foundation of our 
faith. The doctrine of the Atonement, closely con- 
nected with and presupposing both, must be taken on its 
own merits ; it cannot derive any collateral support from 
them. If this is true, they are also true ; but this has got 
to be established first, on its own independent evidence. 

And as the Atonement is the cardinal point in tiie 
Orthodox theory, and the strong point in Orthodox inter- 
pretation, so I freely confess that it brings more difficulty, 
8* 



90 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

creates more diversity of exposition, and is less satisfac- 
torily treated, among those who dissent from that theory, 
than any or all the other points. Not that there is any 
doubt in our minds as to the essential correctness of our 
opinion. On the contrary, we more expressly and defi- 
nitely and consistently oppose the theory of the Divine 
government which it implies, than perhaps any other one 
of the Orthodox positions. Elsewhere we make conces- 
sions, — yield one point to religious feeling, another to 
obscurity of interpretation ; while this is the very doc- 
trine, the very system, which we contend against. But 
our concessions elsewhere, the style in which the con- 
troversy is carried on, are just what make it difficult to 
meet point-blank the arguments urged here. On the 
usual acknowledged principles of Biblical interpretation, 
there is certainly an apparent advantage on the other 
side. 

Our difficulty is not as to the doctrine, but as to the 
style of argument and illustration used by the writers of 
the New Testament. Our general objections to the doc- 
trine, as commonly laid down, are sufficiently decided. 
We are quite clear in our own minds when we say, in 
general, that Scripture language is to be interpreted, not 
like the strict and scientific language of a creed, but ac- 
cording to the exigencies of the religious sentiment and 
the way of thinking of the time. We cannot, indeed, 
always draw the line, and say how much latitude we may 
allow to the religious feeling, how much is to be ascribed 
to the customs of religious thought. And so we are 
sometimes hard pushed on particular expressions, and 
forced to remain in doubt of the precise intention of 
many an obscure passage. Still, of our general principle 
we have no doubt whatever ; and as to the points of 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 91 

critical perplexity, they yield one by one as we study 
the mind and history of the apostles, until, in these last 
few years, we have (we think) as consistent and full and 
learned an exegesis as any class of commentators, and 
the teachings of the Testament throughout are felt to be 
in almost, if not quite, unbroken harmony with our essen- 
tial views of religious truth. 

The exposition of the Scriptural view of the life and 
death of Christ has been so fully and admirably stated, 
by several well-known writers, that it need not be de- 
tailed here, and I pass it over with only the briefest men- 
tion.* The words of my text suggest clearly enough 
the principle we follow ; and they are, I think, wholly 
irreconcilable with the Orthodox statement of Christ's 
atoning work. cc If, while we were enemies, we were 
reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, 
being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." Here 
it is not the death of Christ that saves us, but his life, — 
evidently by creating the faith and moral energy and 
religious affections essential to the spiritual health (or 
salvation) of our soul. It is not God that is reconciled 
to man by the death of his Son, but man that is recon- 
ciled to God ; that is, the reconciling (or atoning) agency 
is wrought on man's mind, in the sphere of our affections, 
conscience, and reason. Whatever the influence is, 
then, it is a moral influence, acting according to the 
laws of the development of human character and the con- 
ditions of human life. It is a moral, not a legal work, 
done in the sphere of man's life, and not in that of 
God's. He needs no reconciliation with man ; it were 



* See Liverpool Lectures, Lect. VI. One part of this exposition 
I have briefly stated below (p. 97), by way of illustration. 



92 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

strange impiety to think it. Nothing is needed except 
that state of man's heart which makes it possible for 
the Divine love to be felt there. The self-devotion of 
Jesus Christ to humiliation, pain, and death brings 
about just that state, — no matter how, — by laws God 
has written on the heart, and effects just that reconcil- 
ing work ; this then is to be followed up by the series 
of moral lessons and religious influences from his life, 
that the spiritual growth and blessedness of the soul may 
be complete. 

This, as I understand it, is the religious lesson taught, 
not only in this passage, but throughout the Testament, 
in connection with the life and death of Christ. It is 
dwelt on continually, fondly ; with the affectionate con- 
stancy we might expect in the personal friends of Jesus ; 
with such emphasis and illustration as the exigencies of 
the time required. I presume that all Orthodox com- 
mentators cheerfully accept this rendering, — of the 
moral influence on man of the life and death of Christ, 
— not thinking (which I do) that it is at variance with 
their theory. But they add to it besides, that that event 
fulfilled a purpose in the Divine economy wholly above 
and aside from any moral influence on man ; that it was 
the appointed sacrifice to expiate the .guilt of the whole 
human race ; that it was in the strictest sense vicarious, 
or accepted instead of the corresponding suffering to be 
endured by men, taking the place of their just punish- 
ment ; that its efficacy was infinite, as involving an in- 
finite being in its doom ; that by a previous appointment 
of God, wholly independent of any thing in the human 
will, its merit passes over, and becomes the purchase- 
money, the ransom, the seal, of man's redemption ; and, 
in fine, that on this condition, and this alone, could the 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 93 

claims of God's justice and mercy be reconciled, or 
any single man escape the penalty due to the infinite 
guilt of the human race. It is in this region of specula- 
tion and dogma that we find ourselves confronting a 
hostile theory. This is the view of the Divine govern- 
ment to which we express and maintain an unqualified 
opposition. 

Of the class of ideas involved in this hypothesis, 
their bearing on the Divine character and man's condi- 
tion, I have spoken somewhat fully before. My ob- 
ject now is to examine the grounds on which this theory 
is sustained, and to show its variance w 7 ith Scripture and 
right reason. My argument will, therefore, be contained 
in these two main points : — first, the insufficiency of 
the evidence on which this doctrine is supposed to rest ; 
second, the contradictory and impossible nature of the 
ideas contained in it. And for the sake of a clearer un- 
derstanding, T will first recount shortly the different forms 
in which the doctrine has been held. 

The leading idea now, as is well know T n, is that of an 
infinite sacrifice, supposed to be required by the consti- 
tution of the Divine government, to vindicate its maj- 
esty, pay the penalty due to sin, and (in the strange 
language of its defenders) " enable God honorably to 
pardon human guilt." This is its present, its modem 
form ; not its first or ancient form. As I stated in my 
remarks on the Trinity, the idea of an infinite sacrifice 
did not enter definitely into the statements of the earlier 
creeds. The motive then was simply to give the great- 
est possible honor to Christ, as well as to satisfy the 
Greek or Eastern spirit of speculation. Finding, how- 
ever, the death of Jesus spoken of as a ransom, the 



94 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

dogmatists naturally asked, For what and to whom was 
the ransom paid ? To deliver man from hell, was the 
reply ; and it must have been paid to Satan, for his 
power it was that bound men's souls in hell.* And so 
the received opinion was, that Christ's death was the 
ransom or equivalent paid in due form of covenant to 
Satan, as the literal purchase-money of man's redemp- 
tion. And this interpretation was further carried out, 
by saying that Christ outwitted Satan, as he had done 
to Adam in paradise. He cheated Adam, by promis- 
ing gifts which proved treacherous, — as, in legends and 
fables, the coin the Devil pays is said always to turn 
into dry leaves and dust. And just so, in retaliation, 
Christ persuaded Satan to take him as substitute for the 
whole human race ; then, he consenting, and so losing 
his hold on man, Christ, in virtue of his omnipotence, 
escaped and foiled the Adversary at his own weapons, 
" Under the bait of the flesh," to use a favorite ex- 
pression, u the hook of the Divinity was hid." Strange 
as this sounds to us, it is yet perfectly in keeping with 
the spirit of those times, — especially of the Italian or 
Etruscan priesthood, from which many ideas were in- 
herited in the Church of Rome. This was the first 
distinct and consistent form in which the doctrine of 
Christ's sacrifice was held, — not regarded then as 
strictly infinite, but only as of such a sort as to serve 
for a sufficient decoy and bait to Satan. 

A thousand years after the apostolic times, another 
theory was developed, — still most prominent in the 
Roman Church, and making one part of the modern 
Orthodox scheme. It was, that the merits of Christ, 

* Christian Examiner, July, 1845. Prospective Review, Vol. I. 
No. 4. 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 95 

and his death, were the literal payment of our debt to 
God, and so entitle man to his forgiveness. For man 
owes all to God. The perfect obedience of every 
thought, act, wish, would not be more than enough. 
No man does or can pay off his own account ; but 
the merits of Christ being infinite, and u imputed " to 
man, there is laid up as it were an infinite treasury of 
good works, out of which benefit will be had by certain 
conditions. And the Catholic theory is, that the Church 
is the depositary of this resource ; its ministers keep 
the treasury-keys ; and it can make dispensation, in its 
own way, to remove the penalty of man's guilt. And 
hence the whole theory of indulgences. 

And lastly, out of this, by an easy transition, was de- 
veloped the modern doctrine, which I have more fully 
set forth. In this the prominent idea is the vindication 
of the honor or integrity of the Divine government, 
together with the metaphysical impossibility of remov- 
ing the penalty of sin except its infinite guilt be atoned 
for by an infinite corresponding sacrifice ; which, again, 
could only be offered by God himself. 

It will be observed that the metaphysical part of the 
theory, or that which is out of the range of man's char- 
acter and ability, has been gradually retreating, — be- 
coming more refined and abstract, — while the moral part 
has come more and more clearly into view. The rude 
and coarse idea at first was, an actual compact between 
God and the Devil, for the purchase of man, as a piece 
of goods, or his ransom, as a literal prisoner or slave ; 
while now it is the most remote and abstract point of 
metaphysical reasoning to define moral evil in such a 
way as to make it require, or even allow, the actual 
sacrifice of atonement. Then, man was held to be in 






96 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

passive bondage, and passively transferred ; now, a 
thousand moral influences are acting on him, to deter- 
mine his spiritual state, — at most presupposing a cer- 
tain previous condition or method of administering the 
government of God. Even those who hold the Ortho- 
dox view abstractly yet prefer to dwell upon the human 
side ; and it is not hard to see that this element will 
soon outgrow and swallow up the other wholly. And 
my purpose now is to show that this result is both 
necessary and right ; in other words, that the meta- 
physical element, included in the so-called doctrine of 
the Atonement, is a gratuitous and needless inference 
from Scripture, and repugnant both to reason and our 
highest view of right. , 

I. The Scripture proof, adduced in support of the 
Orthodox view of Atonement is imperfect, and not to be 
relied on. The word itself is found only once in the 
New Testament, and then in a passage (corresponding 
to my text) where, by universal allowance, it should be 
u reconciliation." It is a w T ord which, in its proper 
meaning, belongs only to the Old Testament, where it 
signifies something very like the Roman Catholic idea of 
penance, only paid in the form of sacrifice, — that is, 
the design being not to make up for a moral offence com- 
mitted, which would have been an encouragement to 
immorality, but to expiate some legal offence, or dis- 
ability, or " impurity," from which one w 7 as ransomed, 
and restored to his full religious privileges as a Jew, 
by a certain prescribed form of sacrifice, — the ar- 
rears, or residue unatoned for, being made up in the 
manner which I shall presently mention. This is the 
idea of " atonement," as found among the Jews. It 
had nothing to do with moral guilt ; only pagan priest- 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 97 

hoods professed to expiate that by gifts. But it refer- 
red to the ritual law, and the Jewish national observ- 
ances of sacrifice. And so, in the legitimate and proper 
meaning of the word, it evidently has nothing to do with 
the death of Christ. 

At the same time, it is easy to see how the religious 
customs of the Jews, established for centuries, would be 
constantly used among them in illustration of religious 
ideas ; and especially how Jewish Christians would seek 
to blend the new faith with the old, by tracing every 
possible analogy that could be found or fancied in the 
Old Testament. To explain this fully requires far more 
time and attention than can be given to it here ; but a 
single illustration will show T partly what I mean. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews (which was very prob- 
ably written by Apollos, the friend of Paul) endeavours, 
from first to last, to meet the Hebrew prejudices, and 
reconcile the Jew 7 s \o the simplicity of the Christian 
faith. This could be done only through the medium of 
their previous ideas. Christianity, without priest or rit- 
ual, was a thing they could not comprehend ; and even 
those inclined towards the new religion contemplated 
this feature of it with vague terror and dislike. Now the 
writer must show, if possible, on Jewish principles, how 
the ritual not only might be, but actually had been, done 
away. One main point of his argument may be stated 
thus.* On the great annual festival of Atonement, or 
expiation, the high-priest went within the vail of the tem- 
ple, and sprinkled the blood of the victim on the mercy- 
seat, expiating thus the thousand legal offences for which 
due propitiation had not been already made. At that 
moment the burden of legal debt was lifted oft' from 

* Liverpool Lectures, Lect. VI. 

9 



98 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

the entire people : and while he remained within the 
vail, the usual sacrifices were superseded. Now Christ, 
the great high-priest of the new dispensation, had passed 
with his own blood as victim, behind the vail of mor- 
tality, to the mercy-seat, or immediate presence of God. 
By the strictest interpretation of the Jewish law, all 
sacrifices are therefore suspended ; and, on their own 
principles, while he is within the vail, the ceremonial 
worship is no longer required. Christ's peculiar fitness, 
both as priest (for he is near to us in human sympathy, 
and can u be touched with the feeling of our infirm- 
ities ") and as victim (for in the innocence of his life he 
is cc a lamb without spot or blemish"), is elaborately 
argued and illustrated ; and the reasoning is brought to a 
focus, as it were, by comparing the sixteenth chapter of 
Leviticus with the ninth of this Epistle. 

But there were still other points that gave uneasiness 
to the mind of Jews taught to believe implicitly in the 
ancient faith. Among the rest, the sacred line of the 
priesthood, unbroken from the time of Aaron, must not 
be broken in upon, they thought ; and even granting 
Christ to be such a priest as was needed in the new 
dispensation, how will he satisfy this claim ? To an- 
swer this, the writer reminds them of a royal priest, who 
lived in old traditionary times, long before Aaron, to 
whom Abraham himself, the father of the faithful, did 
honor ; far higher, then, in dignity than any son of Abra- 
ham could be. And here, says he, is just such a priest 
as Christ. This old Melchisedek, — without any record- 
ed father or mother, — of whom you know not so much 
as when he began to live or when he died, — he is the 
great royal priest of our ancient history. God's own 
anointing gave him his priestly dignity, — not any hered- 
itary descent ; and just so it is with Christ. 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 99 

Now, this turn of argument shows how impossible it is 
for us to reason, with any confidence, from the style of 
illustrations used in arguments to the Jews and Gentiles 
of that period. As to this very instance, all sorts of 
strange hypotheses have been invented to account for 
the mention of old Melchisedek, and set aside the plain 
and simple meaning. Some have gone so far as to con- 
jecture vaguely that he might be God himself, revealing 
himself to Abraham ; others, that he might be Christ in a 
preexistent state, or a man miraculously made, like Adam, 
without any human parents. He has also been supposed 
to be the Holy Spirit, an angel, or Enoch, who lived 
before the flood. Calmet elaborately argues that he was 
probably Shem, the son of Noah. And a sect arose in 
the early centuries affirming him to be the superior of 
Christ, and adopting his name, instead of Christ's, for 
their designation. The plain meaning seems to be, that 
he occurred to the Apostle's (or writer's) mind, as an 
excellent instance to show the very point he was urging, 
— a case in hand to prove the simple, and to us very 
obvious proposition, that one can be just^ as good a 
priest, even if his father was not a priest before him, 
and we know nothing whatever of his history. 

It seems to me, then, entirely impossible and unauthor- 
ized to force an argument from the style of illustrations 
used in the Testament, so as to give a particular dog- 
matic meaning to the life and death of Christ. It is 
undeniable, that only by such a style of argument can 
the doctrine of the Atonement be sustained a single hour. 
Deprive it of the support found in a few appeals, illus- 
trations, religious phrases of speech of this class, and it 
falls directly to the ground. To uphold it, you must 
take a certain class of arguments, similar to that I have 



100 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

just cited in reference to Melchisedek ; you must insist 
upon their literal and extreme construction, divorce them 
from their connection with the prevalent religious ideas 
and the subject-matter of the Christian faith as a whole, 
read them as closely and severely as a formula in alge- 
braic signs and symbols, and in that way evolve your 
metaphysical theory, which thenceforward you make the 
keystone of your structure and the cardinal point of your 
whole religious scheme. It would be tedious and un- 
profitable to go critically over the whole ground, and 
expound one by one the phrases and figures of speech 
supposed to favor that theory. From the general state- 
ment I have made, which (whatever the abstract truth 
or falseness of the doctrine) is plainly and undeniably 
correct, you will see how false must be the principle, 
and how unsatisfactory the evidence, by which a doctrine 
so derived must be sustained. I do not deny or disguise 
the difficulty of special passages ; but I do say, that to 
found one's theory on those difficulties, and make dark 
things serve as the basis and interpretation of what is 
plain, is utterly to reverse the process of a healthy mind, 
and to set us all afloat as to any principles of belief 
whatever. 

Now, contrast with this obscure and uncertain style of 
Scriptural reasoning the simple, affectionate, spiritual 
style which we find at the fountain-head. To Christ 
himself we should surely go to learn the intention of his 
mission, especially from his hints to interpret if we may 
the mystery of his death. And, as if expressly not to 
leave us in the dark on so interesting a matter, or to cor- 
rect beforehand the abuses and crude superstitions that 
were sure to come up, there is left recorded a conversa- 
tion of Jesus with his disciples on this very point, — the 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 101 

saving influence of his life and death, — held just before 
he suffered, and longer than all his other recorded dis- 
courses put together, excepting one. And what does he 
say of an atoning sacrifice, the discharge of an infinite 
penalty, the ransom of the guilty by the sufferings of the 
innocent ? Not a word, not a syllable. So far as I am 
aware, not a single sentence from this discourse of Christ, 
or any other, has ever been brought up in support of the 
Orthodox theory ; at least, except in illustration of those 
points of motive and affection which belong in common 
to every Christian. The Gospel ground has been quietly 
abandoned, for purposes of theological argument, to those 
of differing belief. To sustain that theory, recourse must 
always be had to the involved and perplexing train of 
argument or style of illustration used in combating the 
scruples, and braiding in the Christian idea with the pre- 
vious religious thoughts and habits and prejudices, of 
Jews or pagans, — and these often violent, bigoted, way- 
ward, cavilling adversaries of the simple truth. No won- 
der this way of reasoning was adopted, for there was none 
other. Nothing but the most perverse ingenuity, the 
most singular love of paradox and hidden meaning, could 
possibly imagine any thing in the Gospel story but the 
personal appeal, the living faith, the spiritual presence, 
the sanctifying influence, of the living or departed Sav- 
iour, as felt and recognized in the affectionate mind of 
those who saw him and listened to his words. His death, 
as he speaks of it, has no supernatural and metaphysical 
efficacy on the purposes and ways of God. It is sim- 
ply a return to the Father ; the seal of his living tes- 
timony ; the condition of his spiritual presence, and of 
the coming of the pure Spirit of Truth, to dwell in their 
hearts. 

9* 



102 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

II. Having remarked thus much of the quality and 
style of the Scriptural argument, I proceed briefly to 
consider the merits of the theory itself ; taking its own 
claims and pretensions, accepting its most plausible and 
consistent shape, and endeavouring to see how it comes 
recommended to our intellectual and moral sense. 

The first thing we observe in it is, that a huge defi- 
ciency is left in the theory of redemption, which there 
is not even the smallest pretence to supply. The very 
terms in which it must be stated carry their own refuta- 
tion along with them. Of the strange and pagan idea 
of a u conflict of attributes " in the Divine nature, I 
have spoken before. I need not repeat now what I said 
then, or stop to prove (what is very plain) that this con- 
flict is essential to the scheme. But here we are met 
by the inquiry, If there was a chasm or conflict between 
the qualities of mercy and justice in the mind of God, 
and if Christ (which is also essential to this theory) was 
really and truly God, coequal with the Father, must 
there not have been the same conflict of attributes in 
him too ? Is the Father deficient in mercy, that he re- 
quires so terrible a sacrifice ? Or has the Son only an 
obscure and feeble sense of justice, that he can " hon- 
orably," not only overlook man's guilt, but so love the 
world as to give himself to die for it ? If the honor of 
God did not allow him to pardon the guilty, could that 
same honor allow him to punish the innocent ? Or else, 
would not the "justice" of the Son require satisfac- 
tion too, — and so a series of infinite sacrifices be de- 
manded, ad infinitum ? Or if one is enough, why is 
any needed at all ? If the rest of the series be remit- 
ted, why not this ? The answer will be, that God re- 
quired the sacrifice, and God endured it, and so the cir- 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 103 

cle is complete. So it is ; and it is simply a circle of 
operations in the mind of God. And I say the state- 
ment of the doctrine carries its own refutation ; be- 
cause, when fairly presented and reasoned out, it reduces 
itself to this : — Whatever the demands of Divine jus- 
tice, suppose them even infinite, they are perfectly and 
adequately met by the infinite love of God. We have 
not so much to dread from his sovereignty, as to trust in 
his power. And the fiction of a suffering God, endur- 
ing a penalty exacted by himself, is only a device to 
render that glorious conception familiar to our imperfect 
mind. 

But the dogmatist will insist that the sacrifice was 
actually and historically accomplished in the death of 
Christ. To this we can only reply by the unanswer- 
able dilemma which has been employed from the first, 
and from which no refuge can be found, except in an 
unmeaning form of words. Either the infinite nature of 
God suffered upon the cross, or the finite nature of man. 
If you say the former, you commit the strange and un- 
intelligible blasphemy of saying, that the infinite and per- 
fect is subject to limitation, distress, and harm, — to all 
the worst and most humiliating conditions of man's im- 
perfection. If you say the latter, then the doctrine of 
an infinite sacrifice falls to the ground at once. Or if 
you insist, yet further, that both natures were mysterious- 
ly blended in Jesus, you do not yet evade the difficulty. 
One or the other nature in him must suffer : which was 
it ? And if you take the last resource, of saying that 
the union of attributes in him was of such a sort that 
the sufferings of the man were "judicially attributed" 
to the God, and it was regarded in the Divine economy 
as if the infinite nature had suffered to redeem an in- 






104 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

finite amount of guilt, then you fall back just where I 
wish, — on the free and abundant mercy of God. And 
your real meaning is, not that God does demand, but 
that, in consideration of his own infinite perfection and 
the feebleness and misery of man, he does not demand 
an infinite penalty to expiate our human guilt, and, 
though conscience may tell us we deserve it, has yet 
symbolically shown, in the death of Jesus, that the re- 
sources of Divine love are boundless, so that no human 
being need despair. Here, evidently enough, whether 
you retain the symbol or not, you desert the dogmatic 
meaning, and fall back on the pure, simple, religious 
truth, appealing only to the mind, conscience, and heart 
of men. 

A further illustration may be addressed to those fa- 
miliar with the theory of mathematics. Allowing the 
full and literal exactness of the statement, that the suf- 
fering endured by an infinite being constitutes an infinite 
sacrifice, we have not got to the bottom of the difficulty. 
We may thus admit that the agony of Christ was equal 
in intensity to the infinite agony of hell, but it was 
only momentary in duration. In hell, infinite intensity 
and duration are supposed to be combined, while the 
penalty is liable to be inflicted on an infinite number. 
Thus " an infinite quantity of the first degree " (in the 
language of mathematics) is compared with "an infi- 
nite quantity of the second degree," and the ratio be- 
tween them, as all mathematicians know, is nothing ; or 
with one of the third degree, where it is infinitely less 
than nothing. Or, taking in the difference between a 
divine and a "human soul, to set off against the endless 
generations of the human race, the comparison will be 
only one degree improved ; so that Christ himself could 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 105 

not make good the penalty for all, and would be pre- 
cisely as far from it as a mere man from making atone- 
ment for a single person. Remember, it is the Ortho- 
dox creed which forces on us this discussion of infinites, 
and makes its strong point from it. It is no choice of 
ours ; but if we must take it, we will go with it as far 
as any one. Take the doctrine at its word, concede 
its leading principle, and we see how it instantly con- 
futes and swallows up itself. The difference, on its own 
terms, is enormous, infinite ; and all it can reply is, that 
the free mercy of God allows this difference. 

But still further : granting all that the doctrine would 
imply, its practical signification is lost and cast aside in 
the concessions of its advocates, or rather in their stren- 
uous and urgent demand for something more. I find in 
the course of reasoning employed in illustrating a com- 
paratively moderate view of the Calvinistic scheme, the 
following extraordinary paragraph : — 

" Notwithstanding the unlimited provision of the Gos- 
pel, all) when left to themselves, with one consent re- 
ject the overtures of mercy, and will not come unto 
Christ that they might have life. Even when the spirit 
strives, they do always resist. No sense of guilt and 
danger, no consciousness of obligation and duty, no 
pressure of motives, will constrain a living man to lay 
down the arms of rebellion, and be reconciled to God. 
If the Spirit of God does not put forth the power and 
glory of his grace, to wrest the weapons of revolt from 
his hands, and put a new r spirit within him, and make the 
sinner willing in the day of his power, all are lost, and 
Christ is dead in vain." 

In perfect accordance with this, I have heard it rep- 
resented, that, even after his death and resurrection, 



106 THE YICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

Christ may be supposed as still doubtful whether his sac- 
rifice would be accepted, until he rose to heaven and 
took his place beside the eternal throne, That is, in 
plain words, the whole vast apparatus being brought in 
play, the infinite agony having been endured, it is doubt- 
ful whether Goo 1 will even yet relent, and perfectly cer- 
tain that man will spurn the boon of mercy. If any 
thing could be added to the hideous atrocity of such a 
statement, it would be the dogmatic inference which 
follows. " When Christ, in the covenant of peace, en- 
gaged to lay down his life for the world, a stipulated 
number was given him as his reward." These are the 
" elect." God can now choose whom he will to eter- 
nal life, and is perfectly clear of partiality or blame in 
condemning all the rest to eternal death ! In other 
words, by making an offer which he knew beforehand 
would be rejected, he finds the excuse he wanted for 
condemning the vast majority of mankind to the inexora- 
ble torments of hell for ever ! 

Thus is this doctrine strictly and logically reasoned 
out to its last results. There is no over-statement or 
caricature in what has now been said. The worst 
things I have shown you are quoted word for word from 
a moderate and popular exposition of a milder form of 
the Calvinistic creed. It is such theology as it is sup- 
posed will go down now in New England, where the 
popular mind is no doubt more liberalized than in any 
country where Calvinism has extensively prevailed. By 
going back a hundred years, and taking another class of 
writers, I could display far more extravagant and terri- 
ble representations than these. But what I have repre- 
sented is precisely the last result of the Orthodox the- 
ory, as consistently held at the present day ; and I do 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 107 

not know very well how to describe it in milder lan- 
guage than I have now used. And I think I have said 
enough to show that, in whatever way you look at that 
theory, it reduces itself to an incredible paradox. It 
annihilates its own first principles ; it is involved in a 
dilemma from which there is no escape ; by acknowledg- 
ment, it does not answer its end ; and it results at last in 
what, to one not familiar with such ideas, seems a fright- 
ful and appalling blasphemy. 

And, in fine, our objections to this doctrine may be 
summed up in this one word. We do not, we carffiot, 
believe in any such God, or such theory of sin and its 
consequences, as is taken for granted here. The moral 
difficulty in it is worse than even the intellectual, and 
absolutely insurmountable. Besides the radical contra- 
diction of God being unable honorably to forgive the 
world, and then able not 'only to forgive but to suffer and 
die for it ; besides the strange and barbarous assump- 
tion, that the torture of an infinite and holy being could 
restore God's damaged honor and make amends for hu- 
man guilt ; besides the dilemma of supposing that the 
Infinite nature can suffer harm, or else of finding no ex- 
piation after all ; besides the matching of one infinity 
against a combination of three, — time and number being 
superadded to intensity, to make the sufferings of man 
by a double infinity more than those of Christ ; besides 
the acknowledged failure of the whole scheme, unless a 
new order of Divine operations be brought in to compel 
its partial success ; — all which objections we have found 
lying against the scheme of vicarious sacrifice ; — the 
moral theory of man's nature which it involves is w T orse 
than all. As if moral guilt could be even " judicially " 
transferred, and assumed by some one else, like a pecu- 



108 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

niary debt ! As if the great retribution which every soul 
must undergo for its own wrong, in virtue of its own 
moral nature, could be averted by another's suffering ! 
As if a conscience awake to the reality of sin and the 
glorious prospect of holiness and spiritual life could con- 
sent to receive, or entertain the possibility of receiving, 
absolution on such terms, transferring its own penalty, 
and appropriating another's righteousness ! If the moral 
influence of Christ's death creates such a spirit in man 
as to wipe away his guilt, then nothing more is required. 
Guilt itself, speaking morally, is the penalty, the bond- 
age, the revenge of guilt ; and the faith and love that 
have superseded it are the very blessing that w^as to be 
sought. If the guilt is not removed, the salvation is not 
possible. Spiritual blessedness cannot be put upon a 
man from without, like clothes or riches. It is inconsis- 
tent with the condition of a guilty soul. And if the guilt 
is removed, what do we want besides ? 

So here, again, we find ourselves reduced to an alter- 
native, either branch of which destroys the force of the 
Orthodox dogma. Either the moral influence of Christ's 
life and death, in combination with other providential 
influence, prevails on the human heart to renounce its 
sin, or it does not. If it does, it would be daring im- 
piety to say that God requires any thing more before he 
will abate the penalty of sin, and so the Atonement is no 
longer needed ; or if it does not, then man is not in 
a condition to receive salvation at all, and the Atone- 
ment is no longer possible. If you escape from this 
by saying that God in addition will work upon the hearts 
of the elect, 'and compel them to receive the favor they 
had refused, then you commit two more blunders ; first, 
by defying all the laws of man's moral constitution, which 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 109 

cannot receive any form of blessedness without being 
morally fit for it ; and second, by ascribing to the free 
and even compulsory mercy of God after the sacrifice of 
Christ what you maintained it to be dangerous and im- 
possible for him to grant before. 

I do not suppose that these inconsistencies and sole- 
cisms are present consciously in the mind of those who 
advocate this scheme. Or if they ever become faintly 
aware of them, they are overborne by the single point of 
practical religious faith contained in it. This I have en- 
deavoured to bring out in clear relief, as the conclusion of 
each section of my argument, lest you might think I 
overlook or deny the religious significance of the dogma. 
This I by no means do. I have represented it uniformly 
as a symbolical or mythological or dogmatic way of rep- 
resenting the perfect love and infinite mercy associated in 
the Christian scheme with the awful sovereignty of God. 
The statement, that the sacrifice was literally required 
and actually made, I treat as a symbol or "myth"; 
and the real meaning of it I consider to be the glorious 
truth which I have already expressed. And this is in 
point of fact the very meaning which is always seized 
and held in the religious heart. No man, when he is 
told to repose his hope of God's mercy on the sufferings 
of Christ, thinks of God's previous inexorable wrath, 
which made such sufferings essential before he would 
forgive ; neither does he think of the lost condition of 
the mass of men, to whom the Atonement does not 
apply ; still less of the immense probability (according to 
this scheme) that he himself is of those abandoned by 
God and lost. It is a curious fact, and one which does 
infinite honor to man's natural confidence in God, that 
10 



110 THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 

every person tacitly assumes (whatever his religious 
theory) that he himself is one of the elect, — at least so 
far as this, that, if he does his part, he has nothing to 
fear on God's part. This, I say, is a part of every 
man's natural faith ; and is never shaken, except at some 
crisis of momentary excitement, or some condition of 
religious frenzy. It is the normal and healthy attitude of 
the soul ; and it is always taken advantage of in urging 
the motive of hope in the Calvinistic scheme, even 
though its more dreadful and implacable features are 
held in reserve. Ask any believer in it what it is that 
recommends it, and he will tell you, the point of hope 
it gives him, — the countenance of Divine compassion 
it shows to him. Ask him, further, how it bears on 
the world in general, and he will acknowledge perhaps 
enough to make him cherish his private hope more 
preciously in contrast, or dread to quit his hold on it. 
But he will not bring that part of it into a definite propo- 
sition ; and it is only with reluctance that he admits it 
at all. Or, with still more creditable inconsistency, he 
tacitly assumes that such is the inevitable condition of 
things naturally ; and considers that the creed, which in 
fact is the only ground for believing it, is instead the only 
way of escaping it. 

And, finally, this point of personal religious faith is the 
only thing which could have made it possible for the 
doctrine to be so long received and cherished. In what- 
ever way we take it, when looked at narrowly, it con- 
ducts us to the same result, as we have seen. And that 
result is perfect faith in the love of God, as prevailing 
over every degree of sin. Whatever is added to this on 
God's part is a barbarous and obscure statement of 
metaphysics, confounding and bewildering our whole idea 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. Ill 

of the Divine government. Whatever can be added to 
it on man's part is that order of motives, of moral 
appeal, which should direct the spiritual discipline and 
heavenward aspiration of the soul. And, as none of 
God's works is made in vain, and no development of 
man's religious thought without its use, I suppose that, 
even in the crude and imperfect forms under which the 
Christian doctrine of reconciliation has been held, it has 
served a most important purpose in educating the con- 
science and the mind of men. I do not think the 
appeals and arguments by which the theories have been 
sustained were without their use. That would be to 
discredit too much the providential training man's relig- 
ious thought has undergone. 

But I think these appeals and arguments have served 
their turn, and had better be dispensed with. The moral 
and intellectual difficulties with which they are found 
to be inextricablv involved are forced more and more 
strongly upon our notice. But one invaluable thing we 
owe in great measure even to this harsh and imperfect 
statement of the truth. Conviction of sin and confi- 
dence of access to God are certainly the characteristics, 
the two coordinate features, by which the religious life of 
Christendom has been distinguished from all other forms 
of human development. In whatever degree these have 
been due to the earnest enforcement of those creeds 
which have sought to account for the expiation of man's 
guilt through the sufferings of Christ, w T e owe them 
many thanks. But while we retain the spiritual truth, 
we need not adhere to the baseless, illogical, unscrip- 
tural error which may happen to be connected with it. 
The ultimate ground of trust, at any rate, is the free 
mercy of God, as illustrated in the life and word and 



112 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. 



death of Christ. To make our theory perfect, we have 
only to transfer this glorious faith, beyond its present 
limits, to the whole circle of the Divine government, 
and adore the God of love in " all his works, in all 
places of his dominion, 53 



DISCOURSE VI. 



DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

I KNOW THAT IN ME (THAT IS, IN MY FLESH) DWELLETH NO 
GOOD THING : FOR TO WILL IS PRESENT WITH ME, BUT HOW TO 
PERFORM THAT WHICH IS GOOD I FIND NOT. FOR THE GOOD 
THAT I WOULD I DO NOT ; BUT THE EVIL WHICH I WOULD NOT, 

that i do. — Romans vii. 18, 19. 

In the three preceding Discourses, I have considered 
the three cardinal doctrines of Orthodoxy, as applying 
to the nature and purposes of God, — those which be- 
long strictly (by the old scholastic division) to the de- 
partment of Theology, or the religious system on its 
Divine side. These are the Trinity, the Deity of 
Christ, and the Vicarious Atonement. In the three to 
follow, I am to consider it on its human side, or the 
direct bearing of the Divine economy on the condition, 
the destiny, and the culture of mankind. The topics 
which will come accordingly in review will be Human 
Nature, Retribution, and the Scriptures. These will 
complete the circle of the dogmatic or controversial 
points which we are passing in review. 

As we easily see, our view of human nature must 
serve as the basis and point of departure for all our re- 
10* 



114 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

ligious theory. If we think of Christianity in its bear- 
ing on the human race in general, its method of opera- 
tion, its progress, history, and present state, of course 
the view we presuppose of man's moral condition makes 
the element by which we determine all the rest. Or if 
we think of it as a personal matter, as applying to our 
own condition, and appealing to our own conscience, 
then our view of human nature as a whole is reflected 
as it were in ourselves ; our conscious or unconscious 
philosophy, our dogmatic belief one or the other way, 
is what determines the meaning and force and direction 
of all our views of duty, and of any moral appeal. The 
alternative between the two systems is simply stated. 
If man is in a lost, rebellious, and ruined state, — if you 
and I by nature share in the disaster and doom of the 
Fall, from which no natural strength or wisdom could, in 
the ordinary course of Providence, deliver us, — then 
salvation is a rescue, a ransom on given conditions, the 
bringing of all or a chosen number out of infinite misery 
and darkness into a degree of peace and a hope of 
glory which, in their natural estate, there was not the 
smallest reason to anticipate ; and no terms could be 
judged strange or unreasonable by which such redemp- 
tion might be brought about. If, on the other hand, 
man's condition is one of sin, indeed, and misery, of 
weakness and imperfection, yet not of curse or natural 
enmity towards God, then the true meaning of salvation 
is not so much rescue from a specific calamity as spirit- 
ual health and growth ; religion is a method of culture, 
by means of whatever nourishes the soul in goodness ; 
and all the discipline and experience of life, when rightly 
used, is part of the Divinely appointed training of the 
immortal spirit. 



DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 115 

These two ways of regarding the condition of man, 
and the consequent work and meaning of religion, are 
radically different and hostile, and are the most charac- 
teristic and central point of difference between the op- 
posing systems. And though the difference be one of 
philosophy full as much as of theology, though it apply 
full as much to our entire view of life as to our in- 
terpretation of the Christian records, yet it serves to 
mark and separate the two schools of religious thinking 
no less than our various understanding of the Trinity, or 
the sacrifice of Christ. The doctrine of man's native 
and total depravity, in the sense in which I take it, was 
set forth somewhat fully in the first of these Discourses, 
wherQ I assumed it as the point of departure for the re- 
ligious system of Orthodoxy. I need not repeat what 
was said then, but proceed rather to those questions of 
character, evidence, and result, which belong more prop- 
erly to the argument I have now in hand. 

I have just said that our view of human nature in gen- 
eral is very much a transcript, or amplification, or (in 
some cases) an exaggerated contrast, of the view con- 
science and reason give us as to our own moral state. 
Hence it is exposed to all the extravagance, to all 
the bigotry, and narrowness, and morbid eccentricities, 
w 7 hich, according to health, temperament, good or ill 
success in life, and various other causes, may affect our 
moral judgment of ourselves. Our judgment of man- 
kind is a species of egotism. Every man looks on the 
world in a light colored by the medium it must pass 
through before it strikes his eye. What we see is al- 
ways affected more or less by what we are. The judg- 
ment of the character and condition of the world, 
among religious men, makes no exception to this rule. 



116 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

According to the type and character of their faith will 
they take a sanguine or gloomy view of things. A hap- 
py trust in God, or amiable feeling towards men, will 
incline them to see things hopefully, and make every 
possible allowance for existing evil. Sensitiveness of 
conscience and honest self-reproach will make them use 
strong words in speaking of impiety, inhumanity, and 
wrong generally. The Bible abounds in examples of 
both these states of feeling. The cheerful piety of 
some of the Hebrew Psalms, speaking of man as " a 
little lower than the angels," has been the support of all 
encouraging views of human character ; while the lan- 
guage of humble penitence or of honest moral indigna- 
tion has been made the evidence of doctrines siuch as 
this, — strange for their extravagance, and horrible for 
their signification. 

I think this is a fair account, in general, of the way in 
which dogmas so monstrous and incredible as this of 
the total native depravity of man must have had their 
rise. It is held, as it were, from a vague feeling that it 
must be true, as making part and parcel of the Bible. 
No man would wish beforehand that it should be true. 
No one (except a cunning priesthood that loved it for 
the sake of the spiritual power it gave) could take any 
satisfaction in urging it on other minds, unless it were 
from the sincerest conviction that it was perilous not to 
believe and feel it. All our natural feelings rise up 
against it, as indeed, by the very terms of it, they must. 
Its very signification is, that natural emotions and spon- 
taneously formed opinions are necessarily and altogether 
w T rong, — wrong, of course, by its standard of right and 
wrong. No man would wish to believe that a curse, 
infinitely more tremendous than any earthly doom of 



DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 117 

wretchedness, rested on him from his birth ; or that his 
dear child, or parent, or friend, in passing from this 
mortal state, has almost inevitably fallen into inconceiv- 
able and hopeless torture. By the very terms in which 
such a doctrine is stated, all human sympathies and nat- 
ural emotion must be utterly hostile to it. And at times 
these will assert their irresistible sway. Natural affec- 
tion triumphs over theological prejudice, even in the 
coldest breast, when the statement is brought home to 
it, and becomes practical. The sternest bigot cannot 
see his infant dying, or his friend unconscious in the 
last hour, but his previous opinion must break down ; 
and he cannot bring himself to think of any thing but a 
blessed immortality for those he loves. He cannot 
watch a child's careless sport, or receive its winning 
caress, and persuade himself that all is evil, and hateful 
to the eye of God. He may say so, but with a mental 
reservation that takes away the force of what he says. 
A blessed inconsistency makes the full and hearty re- 
ception of this central point of the Calvinistic creed 
for ever impossible to the mass of those professing it. 

And so I need not harrow up your feelings, or excite 
your prejudice, by reciting the horrible conclusions that 
follow close upon the Orthodox statement of man's na- 
tive guilt. I need not lead you through the wearisome 
round of debate, and quibble, and inference, respecting 
the old theological questions that have been broached ; — 
whether infants are inevitably damned if they die unre- 
generate, or may possibly all be saved, or, as this would 
make their longer life a peril and calamity, may not take 
their chance as elect or reprobate ; whether baptism is 
a sufficient safeguard, and by whom it may be adminis- 
tered ; whether the first conscious act is necessarily a 



118 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. ' 

sinful one, and incurs the penalty of infinite guilt ; wheth- 
er heathen men before the time of Christ, who acted up 
to their light, might possibly be saved ; or whether the 
innumerable millions of human beings, who are falling 
off by thousands in a day, old men and babes, in pagan 
or Christian lands, are certainly (the great mass of them) 
lost for ever. These and similar questions, only hinting 
at the frightful circle of ideas that men have been famil- 
iarized and hardened to in their theological debates, we 
may leave untouched. In dealing with a doctrine that 
implies the sternest answer to all of them, I seem to be 
combating, not a hearty and practical conviction of men 
in earnest, but only the ghost or shadow of what was 
once a terrible reality. The difficulty seems, not so 
much to disprove the theory as to account for it, — to 
explain how it ever came to exist in the human mind at 
all. Men believe in practice, now, only what is necessa- 
rily implied in their general system of religious thought. 
The remoter consequences are forgotten, or kept studi- 
ously out of sight ; and a moderate, though still harmful, 
measure of belief lurks in their mind, because they take 
it for granted, rather than because of any proof ; be- 
cause without it the whole theory they hold to would be 
impossible and absurd, rather than for any intrinsic merit 
that commends it to their minds. The statement and 
the refutation may be alike unsatisfactory ; yet, as really 
a very necessary and important part of my course, I 
must present this subject in the best and most tangible 
shape I can. 

Before w6 come to the reasoning employed in favor 
of this doctrine, I wish it may be distinctly fixed in our 
minds what, precisely, is its nature and meaning, and 



DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 119 

what sort of evidence it is which we may expect to find. 
Having done this, I shall next consider the insufficiency 
of the evidence with the erroneous style of interpreta- 
tion on which it rests ; and finally, the evil consequen- 
ces, intellectual and moral, that result from it. 

I. The question is not about the amount of sin or 
guilt there may actually be in the world. Those who 
deny native depravity have often been accused of mak- 
ing too light of the fact of moral evil, — of dwelling too 
much on the bright side of things, and winking out of 
sight the actual wickedness of men, for the sake of keep- 
ing a fair and smooth theory. Perhaps it has been so 
sometimes, — a natural reaction from the over-statements 
on the other side. If human nature itself, which is the 
work of God, is pronounced altogether corrupt, it seemed 
no more than proper reverence to the Author of our 
being to vindicate his work, and call on men to remem- 
ber the glorious capacity of their nature, even at the 
expense, for the moment, of overlooking the actual cor- 
ruption and degradation of it by their own fault. Still, 
they have never knowingly or intentionally confounded 
the eternal distinction between right and wrong, holiness 
and sin. r It was never said of them that they were be- 
hind others in general practice of virtue, and they have 
certainly shown their full share of zeal in opposing vice 
and error, — only, vice and error when they saw them in 
a distinct and palpable shape. I believe that more hu- 
mane legislation and actual reforms of social evils have 
had their root and strength in that class of thinkers, in 
proportion to their numbers, than in any ten others put 
together. 

The real difference is not in the feeling with which we 
regard the fact of guilt, but in the point of view from 



120 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

ivhich we regard it. The point of the Orthodox doc- 
trine on the subject is, not that mankind is generally 
wicked and corrupt, but that it is altogether and abso- 
lutely so, and cannot, in the nature of things, except by 
miracle, be otherwise. This is the position which its 
advocates have chosen. They see the subject from the 
point of view of theological opinion, not from that of the 
natural reason and conscience ; the guilt they speak of 
is not men's actual or apparent guilt, but their theological 
or constructive guilt. By the very terms of the theory, 
our natural sentiments of right and wrong cannot be 
trusted. In fact, where all is on one dead level of sin, 
there can be no real difference of right and wrong. The 
most amiable feeling, the most heroic self-devotion, the 
purest love of God, and man, and truth, or what seems 
so in the eye of reason and conscience, is just as likely 
to be deceitful, corrupt, and hateful in the eye of God, 
as the most atrocious crime. There is no room left 
for subordinate moral distinctions.* All are lost and 
swallowed up in the one gulf of original depravity. All 
differences of faithful and treacherous, kind and cruel, 
generous and malignant, are melted down in that one 
stern judgment, pronounced without reservation or abate- 
ment on the entire human race, — that u the wickedness 
of man is great in the earth, and that every imagination 
of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually." 
To every age, to every nation, to every man, is applied 
without qualification that terrible description of the wick- 
edness of the world before the flood. 

Of course, evidence might be expected as peculiar 
and as strong as the assertion is overwhelming. One 

* See post, page 130. 



DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 121 

would say, that on nothing less than proof positive and 
unequivocal, — demonstration outweighing every doubt, 
crushing every scruple, superseding every other process 
of moral argument or experience, — could he receive such 
a declaration as this for true. And we cannot have re-* 
course to any of the ordinary ways of proving any other 
class of facts. By the very terms of the theory, we 
are warned that our moral sense is corrupt, our reason 
deceitful, all our faculties blinded and perverted by sin. 
So we cannot trust any natural mode of proof ; for once 
to listen to reason on such a subject would be to begin 
by renouncing the theory in order to prove it, — to con- 
fide, for argument's sake, in the integrity of those very 
powers and faculties which we are assured beforehand 
are altogether deceitful and depraved. The common 
sense of men is utterly at fault, and condemned before a 
hearing. And our moral sense, our natural discrimina- 
tion between right and wrong, will not serve us any bet- 
ter. The obscure consciousness of guilt, or personal 
unworthiness, which most men acknowledge, which all 
earnest men deplore, must pass for nothing, and cannot 
be introduced as proof. How should conscience be 
a safer guide than sense and passion, if the whole nature 
is depraved ? If we may trust one sentiment, one fac- 
ulty, why not all, — or the nature we are born to as a 
whole ? The theory itself, you will observe, drives us 
from every other possible method of proof than the ex- 
traneous evidence of theological doctrine. It cannot 
fairly and honestly appeal to any thing in the range of 
human philosophy or ordinary experience, because it 
first deprives us of the test to judge them by. And if 
it should, its case is gone ; for, first, it deserts itself, by 
appealing to a tribunal forejudged to be worthless, and 
11 



122 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

next, the answer it gets from that tribunal is not such as 
it wants. The statement of reason is certainly very dif- 
ferent from that of dogmatic theology. If there are 
germs of evil in man by nature, so there are also germs 
*of good ; for reason and conscience assure us of one 
full as much as of the other. He is no more pure tiger 
in innate capacity and tendency than he is pure angel. 
Nero was no more a man than Socrates or Howard. 
And once granting the native capacity for spiritual life 
and culture, without which there is no possibility of any 
good on any theory, there seems very little left to con- 
tend about, but an empty form of words. So much for 
the answer of reason. 

If, then, the theory is true, we can know it by no 
other method or faculty our Creator has given us, but 
only in the terms of a dogmatic statement. Its evidence 
is not rational or moral, but theological. If we believe 
it, it is either from the necessity of a system which re- 
quires it, and which we accept as proved on other 
grounds ; or else from the most cogent, convincing, 
overwhelming evidence of inspiration. The Bible ar- 
gument, then, ought certainly to be secure and impreg- 
nable. If we detect any weakness in it, any flaw, any 
thing detracting from absolute and unanswerable proof, 
we shall be forced to set it aside. Such a doctrine 
could be accepted on nothing less than such a demon- 
stration. Whether the other parts of the Orthodox the- 
ory are sufficient to bear this out, we may judge from 
the argument touching them severally, or as a whole. 
At present I am dealing only with this single one, and 
the evidence alleged to sustain it. As I have said, this 
evidence must not be sought anywhere but in the Bible. 
And my purpose now is to examine what is the nature 
of this evidence, and what is its just interpretation. 









DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 123 

II. In studying the language of the Bible, or any 
part of it, we certainly ought to consider the purpose 
for which it was written, and judge its meaning by that. 
Considering, then, that a very large part of the Bible is 
in the form of very earnest moral appeal, or else of 
personal moral conviction and penitence, — that it almost 
always takes the point of view of conscience, made sen- 
sitive, too, by the most exalted standard of perfect right, 
and the highest activity of the religious sentiment, — we 
may naturally expect to find very strong language used 
in reference to human guilt, whatever the particular the- 
ory which it intends to teach. Such confessions or ap- 
peals depend on temperament, or the present state of 
mind, far more than on any theological opinion. Moral 
reformers, for example, have in general the most com- 
placent view of all men as to the native excellence and 
powers of mankind ; and yet their very trade is to deal 
in the most bitter and sweeping rebukes of wrong. In 
sternness of denunciation, they often outdo any thing 
that can be matched against them from the Bible. That 
is the very nature of the human mind, when the con- 
science is in active exercise in some single direction. 

Now the Bible is by far the most natural and unso- 
phisticated, in its tone of sentiment, of all books dealing 
with right and wrong, duty and sin ; and its language, in 
respect to human guilt, is certainly very strong. But 
there is no cold-blooded and argumentative statement of 
man's depravity in the manner of theologians. Vehe- 
ment and fiery, desponding, remorseful, reproachful, it 
may be by turns ; but to use its scattered fragments to 
build a dogmatic theory of guilt is utterly to falsify its 
meaning. It will not bear such handling. To neglect 
the sentiment and retain the form, to forget the circum- 



124 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

stances while we insist on the verbal statement, is as 
if we should carry the tone and manner of tragedy into 
a mathematical demonstration, or take for literal descrip- 
tion all the splendid and diversified imagery by which 
the Scriptures set forth the power and glory of Almighty 
God. 

Bat what is the actual and positive amount of proof 
that can be brought by constraint from the Bible pages 
to sustain the argument for the total native depravity of 
man ? Six or eight passages in all are the only ones 
that would be relied on with any certainty ; and the 
force of these will disappear at once, if we keep in 
mind the caution in interpreting which I have just been 
laboring to impress. I will take them up in order, but 
very briefly, and rather to show the outline than to discuss 
them with any fulness. $ And I cannot take the feebler 
ones, which may be used as illustration, but only the 
stronger ones, which are cited as proof. My object is 
not now to give a particular exposition of each, which 
would be mere repetition and weariness, but to show 
how they should be classified to make their application 
plain. They may be ranged in the three divisions which 
follow. 

1. Those which speak of hereditary evil. It is com- 
monly supposed, or taken for granted, that the narrative 
of Adam's fall contains the declaration that it entailed 
the corruption of nature and the ruin of mankind. So 
it does in Milton ; but so it does not in Genesis. A 
glance at the passage will show that the most that can 
be made from it is the sentence to labor, disease, and 
liability to death. Not a syllable is breathed of any 
thing further than this, even where Paul comments on 
it afterwards, and says (Rom. v. 17) that " by one man 






DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 125 

sin entered into the world, and death by sin." Nobody 
doubts that Adam sinned, and that all grown men since 
have sinned. That is not the point at issue. Neither 
does any one acquainted with physiology doubt that moral 
tendencies are inherited by some organic law of descent ; 
so that a bad man's child comes into life at a disadvan- 
tage, so to speak, and will not so easily reach so high a 
degree of culture as another. These are facts of obser- 
vation, not dogmas of a creed. And these are all that, 
by the most strained construction, can be fairly made out 
from any thing said in the Bible of Adam's sin. The 
disadvantage I spoke of is not guilt ; it is mere misfor- 
tune, which is often made up in a hundred ways, — by 
some kind providence, — by sentiments of pity and char- 
ity in other men towards the spoiled child of circum- 
stance. A terrible misfortune it often is, — a terrible 
warning always to a parent's sin, — but one which in the 
child a wise man will only pity, not condemn ; and 
" shall mortal man be more just than God ? " Try as 
you will, you cannot make any thing more than this from 
what the Scripture says of our hereditary guilt. 

2. The next class is strong general descriptions of the 
moral condition of the world, or a particular nation, at 
some particular time. The first is that most emphatic 
one I quoted a little back, of the time before the flood, 
the lewd and insolent temper of which time was, in the 
writer's view, the reason and justification of that stupen- 
dous judgment. A similar description, more pathetically 
detailed, is given of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the 
same list we must include the striking objurgations of the 
Jewish prophets, whose point of appeal was made in be- 
wailing or reproaching the idolatry and corruption of the 
declining Jewish state; as where Isaiah says (i. 4), 
li* 



126 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

" Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity"; or 
where Jeremiah says, in his sombre way (xvii. 9), u The 
heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wick- 
ed : who can know it ? " But incomparably the most 
striking passages of this sort, next after our Saviour's 
denunciations of the hypocrites of his day, are those 
in which the Apostle Paul paints the corruption of the 
pagan world, to make more evident the moral need of 
such a faith as Christianity. These passages, chiefly in 
the Epistle to the Romans, are too well known to need 
repetition here. It is from him that such expressions as 
" there is none righteous," " children of wrath," " the 
understanding darkened," u the Scripture hath con- 
cluded all under sin," are chiefly taken ; sufficiently em- 
phatic and true as suiting his particular object of passion- 
ate remonstrance or appeal, but too high-wrought and 
sweeping to stand for a deliberate judgment or descrip- 
tion of human nature as such, which they never assume to 
be. And as to all these, I think it must be evident 
enough that it would be unauthorized and unfair to insist 
on the literal rendering of every high-toned description or 
vehement rebuke, as containing a deliberate, positive, 
unanswerable matter of fact, equally true for all time, for 
every place, and for each particular man. For such a 
rendering there is no warrant in the terms of Scripture, 
— no justification in reason or truth. 

3. The remaining class consists of passages express- 
ing personal emotion, of humility or contrition, with a 
few instances of gloomy moralizing. Thus David, in his 
penitential psalm (doubtless sincere), after his base and 
atrocious conduct towards Uriah, when his conscience 
was roused and stung by his child's death and Nathan's 
bold rebuke, says (Ps. li. 5), ■" I was shapen in iniquity, 






DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 127 

and in sin did my mother conceive me "; — bitterly true 
as the language of remorse and self-contempt, but mon- 
strous as a charge to be laid indiscriminately at the 
door of every man. So the Preacher (supposed to be 
the sensual and idolatrous Solomon, who had so much 
more head-wisdom and so much less heart-wisdom than 
his father) says (Eccl. ix. 3), " The heart of the sons of 
men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart," — seen 
chiefly in their weary chase for pleasure, and ambition 
that never fills the measure of its craving. Here, again, 
the words of Paul are more deep and earnest than any 
other, in the expression or interpretation of this sen- 
timent. Especially in the chapter from which my text is 
taken, he speaks profoundly of the great moral conflict 
that goes on in the bosom of every earnest man, — the 
struggle from doubt and darkness towards light and 
peace. M I well know," he says, u that in me, that is, 
in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing : for to will is pres- 
ent with me, but how to perform the good which I would 
I find not." Here is a statement which every man of 
deep moral experience will readily accept. No one sup- 
poses that in the flesh, that is, the natural propensities 
and desires, there is any moral merit, innocent or amia- 
ble as they may be in some of their forms. And every 
one knows, too, that it is a most high and difficult part of 
duty to contend with the excess or perversion of these 
very propensities and desires. They do, indeed, make 
virtue difficult ; but for that very reason they make it 
possible. For virtue consists in moral effort, — in con- 
tending with a moral obstacle. And so far from being 
intrinsically depraved and corrupt, our natural constitu- 
tion is only the point of departure, and the God-given 
condition, from which the spiritual life must proceed. 






128 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

The strength of a man's natural passions is always men- 
tioned as an extenuation of his faults, or an enhancing of 
his virtue, — never as intrinsically a matter of blame. 
The reality of the moral struggle, its necessity, not the 
absolute depravity of what causes it, is all that we can 
find contained in this well-known chapter. It is doubt- 
less the story, rapidly told, of Paul's own inward his- 
tory, representing, as Neander says, the class of sincere 
Pharisees. The blind groping and conflict with his own 
thoughts and doubts and temptations of the flesh are what 
he shared with all serious men of an imperfect faith, 
while longing for the pure and true ; the peace he found 
in conviction is the result that is sure to crown the faith- 
ful striving of the soul, in the light and blessing of spirit- 
ual truth. Man's moral condition is powerfully and truly 
told ; but it is one not of abject despair, not of rebellious 
hate, — only the mortal imperfection, the weary and pro- 
tracted struggle, waiting the radiant light of immortality. 
In these three classes may be ranged all the evidence 
from Scripture which has ever been brought to sustain 
the doctrine of man's original and total depravity. The 
strongest passages I have already quoted ; and, once re- 
garding them in their natural connection, they certainly 
do not seem to me overstrained representations of human 
sin, — certainly very far from strong, or explicit, or nu- 
merous enough, even on the strictest theory of Scripture 
inspiration, to bear out such a doctrine as they are cited 
to prove. If an inspired note or comment were affixed 
to each several passage, to assure us that it was equally 
asserted of all men everywhere, and universally true of 
every grade of character, unless supernaturally changed 
or raised, there would be some show of reason for it. 
It would then be only essential to prove the inspiration 






DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 129 

of that comment. As it is, granting the very highest 
degree of inspiration to the Bible as we find it, it is 
totally inadequate to meet the case. The evidence fails 
here; and there is no other testimony we can call in to 
make it good. 

III. I come now to the intrinsic objections to the 
theory, over and above the insufficiency of evidence. 
These objections are partly intellectual and partly moral. 
Let us give a few thoughts to each. 

I have before spoken somewhat fully of the contradic- 
tion into w 7 hich we fall when we presuppose man to be 
born into a rebellious or ruined state, — how we impli- 
cate the Divine character, and deny either his power 
and wisdom, that he could not prevent, or his mercy and 
justice, that he deliberately inflicted, so frightful a catas- 
trophe upon the human race. And in the present Dis- 
course I have already spoken of the difficulty, nay, im- 
possibility, of squaring any natural sentiments of justice 
or virtue, of right and wrong, with all the requisitions of 
this theory. In all this, I have taken for granted its ex- 
treme and harshest form, neglecting the modifications 
which common sense and humanity have by degrees 
brought into it. I have hitherto considered only the 
stern and terrible dogma, as it was produced by the dark 
spirit of the Middle- Age theology ; that which is repro- 
duced in high-toned Calvinism; that which has been 
preached popularly in the churches of our own country, 
and is assumed in most popular religious treatises ; that 
which fearlessly pronounces the entire and utter corrup- 
tion of the natural man, and asserts that no one who has 
not received conversion can be saved from eternal woe. 
And I have done this, because it seems the only way to 
treat the doctrine fairly. To make any abatement in it 



130 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

seems to me virtually to abandon it. Those who main- 
tain it in general terms, without being willing to admit its 
extreme consequences, are reduced to a miserable in- 
consistency. The alternative is simply between accept- 
ing or denying it. To accept it is to accept it all, with 
all its deficiency of proof, and all its mountain-load of 
difficulties. To deny it is to desert the ground of Or- 
thodoxy, and to make one's whole religious system pro- 
ceed upon a different set of principles. This makes 
the intellectual difficulty that must for ever lie at the 
bottom of such a scheme, as I shall now proceed to 
show. 

I am well aware that the advocates of the doctrine in 
name shrink from the application I have given it, and 
even protest against such extreme interpretation, as a 
piece of folly in their fellow-believers, or of unfairness 
in their opponents. They studiously avoid pronouncing 
positively on the doom of all the unregenerate after 
death. They shudder at the horrible declarations of 
old Calvinistic preachers, that hell is paved with infants' 
bones ; and do not like to dwell too explicitly on the 
destination of heathen nations before or since the time 
of Christ. A humanizing process has been going on, 
and denunciations of the world's wickedness take more 
a moral and less a theological tone. Sin is deplored 
more as a fact, and dwelt on less as an inexpiable rebel- 
lion and curse. And the statements of the more en- 
lightened defenders of the dogma are such as we should 
hardly refuse to accept ourselves. At most, we should 
consider them rather exaggerated descriptions of exist- 
ing evil, — too unqualified, but in the main true. What 
we complain of is, that they should adhere to the dog- 
ma in form, which they virtually give up in fact. 



DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 131 

Chalmers, for instance, complains of the exaggera- 
tions of the ultra Orthodox, and allows the existence of 
real virtue, disinterestedness, moral heroism, and pure 
love, distinct from the peculiar fact of conversion and 
regenerate life, — only saying that in such a case duty is 
not referred immediately to God, which may or may not 
be true, according to the circumstances of the case. 
u Whether it be," he says, " the kindliness of maternal 
affection, or the unweariedness of filial piety, or the 
earnestness of devoted patriotism, or the rigor of un- 
bending fidelity, or any other of the recorded virtues 
which shed a glory over the remembrance of Greece and 

of Rome, — we fully concede that they one and 

all of them were sometimes exemplified in those days of 
heathenism ; and that, out of the materials of a period, 
crowded as it was with moral abominations, there may 
also be gathered things which are pure, and lovely, and 
just, and true, and honest, and of good report." And 
in this, I presume, he only makes the concession and 
presents the modification of the Orthodox dogma which 
would be very widely accepted among its advocates. 
But when such allowances as these are made, we put 
the following question : — Do you consider these natu- 
ral distinctions of right and wrong as real or as delu- 
sive ? If they are delusive, then they are the worst, 
most fatal evidence of depravity, — and it is the grossest 
mockery to call them by the name of good at all. If 
they are real, then they must be real in the eye of God 
as well as ours ; and we cannot suppose he would judge 
them more harshly and scrupulously than we. Then 
there is the real distinction of right and wrong, aside 
from any theological category ; and a just God will re- 
ward the right and punish the wrong, irrespective of any 



132 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

such criterion. And if we have already a basis of 
moral judgment, irrespective of the supernatural work 
of grace, it follows inevitably that grace is only to com- 
plete and perfect the work which nature has already be- 
gun, — that is, which is begun, not in the scornful, im- 
pious, passionate nature of a bad man, but in the sincere 
effort, the love of holiness and truth, the upright and 
conscientious nature, of a good man. And in this we 
have stated, in so many words, the whole theory of lib- 
eral Christianity. 

Thus it is in vain to modify the excessive harshness 
of the dogma, and plead for its milder form. The least 
concession yields the entire ground. The smallest 
abatement or reservation is fatal to its intrinsic and es- 
sential meaning. And no departure can be made from 
the downright and sweeping assertions of the old-school 
Orthodox, who confound on purpose all moral distinc- 
tions naturally existing, and swallow up all natural right 
and wrong, hate and love, in one horrid gulf of total 
depravity, without changing wholly the dogmatic force 
of the theory, and coming down to a simple exaggera- 
tion, more or less highly colored, of the actually exist- 
ing evil in the world. And this, as I have said, is by 
no means a point of controversy. It depends wholly on 
the keenness of one's moral sense, or the breadth of his 
observation, not on the exigencies of his particular re- 
ligious creed. The alternative involves one's whole 
conception of the Christian religion. 

I might dwell on other ethical absurdities that result 
from this doctrine. Thus, for argument's sake, a man 
may be conceived as all wrong, — that is, by some stand- 
ard presupposed in the general sense of right and wrong ; 
but these being relative terms, and each involving its op 



DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 133 

posite, it would be nonsense to deny the existence of 
such a standard, and still retain the terms. In other 
words, as right and wrong are moral distinctions, how 
can they exist where there is nothing to distinguish ? 
Again, there is no one to whom this can be an available 
category of wrong, even suppose it true ; for to the un- 
regenerate there is no capacity to receive its truth, and 
to the regenerate it of course no longer applies. And 
again, if it were true, it defeats itself, and renders re- 
ligion impossible except by miracle, and religious appeal 
consequently absurd, —useless to those not converted, 
and needless to those who are. 

But I must pass all these by, and hasten to say a few 
words of its moral effect. And here we must always 
distinguish sharply between the religious conviction and 
the dogmatic opinion. There is a saving efficacy in the 
religious spirit, which seems to keep the temper and 
character from the harm that would naturally come from 
a false point of faith. Where it is the feeling of per- 
sonal contrition that quickens the sense of general de- 
pravity, then we know that this is part of God's way of 
dealing with the soul, and trust the experience will have 
its perfect work. Or where, as in the missionary, it is 
the impulse and nerve of devoted and zealous action to 
save some from a lost and perishing race, then the re- 
ligious feeling gives an actual practical trust in men's 
capacity, and patience in dealing with their faults, which 
may well put to shame the lagging zeal of those of a 
more complacent faith. 

But there are evils on the other side. Among those 
who do not enter into that spirit, who have not those re- 
ligious sympathies or that healthy tone of religious life, 
the sweeping theological declarations of the depravity 
12 



134 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

and corruption of mankind cannot do any thing but 
mischief. They do not have the effect to bring such to 
feel or acknowledge their own deficiencies, while they 
do succeed in blunting, or embittering, or rendering sus- 
picious, their feelings towards the mass of their fellow- 
men. At best, it is a strained and exaggerated tone of 
feeling, which cannot be kept up long without hurting 
the health of mind and conscience. The terrible view 
it presents of God and providence, if sincerely held, 
must strike heaven and earth with a curse. We cannot 
entertain the right sentiment of affectionate reverence 
towards a Being who is made responsible for such a state 
of things. Our selfish fear of being included in the all 
but universal doom, — our personal* and selfish sense of 
gratitude, when we think we are saved from it without 
any merit of our own, to the exclusion of a multitude of 
others at least equally deserving with ourselves, — can- 
not be the right foundation for a healthful, manly, cheer- 
ful piety, which is the highest condition of the religious 
mind. 

And if we at all take in the force and meaning of the 
doctrine we profess, we must be appalled and overpow- 
ered with continual gloom, to think of that dreadful 
curse, resting on all God's creatures, w T hich we can do 
nothing at all, which God himself will do compara- 
tively so little, to remove. The thought of the Cre- 
ator loses one of the chief motives it should include, to 
move our love and reverence. When we think of him 
as the highest Good, as naturally allied to and infinitely 
expanding in his nature those germs of good which w r e 
are conscious of in ourselves or one another, then he is 
the God our soul naturally seeks and loves. But to 
blot over these distinctions, and to make all ideas of 



DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 135 

right and duty depend (as they must) simply on the ar- 
bitrary dictates of an inexorable and capricious will, is 
to abolish the only distinction conceivable between God 
and Fate, and to dry up the most abundant fountain of 
spiritual life in the soul. 

And finally, this substituting of a theological or con- 
structive responsibility for the simple, sound, moral 
sense of an enlightened mind is to strike at the root of 
all natural principles of right. It must steel the heart 
against human sympathies, beget an unconquerable sus- 
picion, alienate men in mutual crimination and distrust ; 
and so weaken that natural bond of faith in men generally, 
which is the real and substantial foundation of all human 
duty and human intercourse. Even if it has not this 
effect in its sincere advocates, yet by their defence of it 
they put a formidable weapon into the hands of bad men. 
It is telling them in plain terms that there is no differ- 
ence between them and other men, unless supernaturally 
changed ; that they are following the dictate and carry- 
ing out the plan given in their natural constitution ; that 
nothing but a selfish fear, which is as bad as selfish pas- 
sion, and perhaps meaner, prevents other men from be- 
ing in all respects as bad as they. It cuts off all natural 
ground for hope, and all motive for moral effort, and 
challenges their scoffing and resentful scrutiny, to ascer- 
tain whether the virtues of the elect and regenerate do, 
after all, differ so completely from what is called deprav- 
ity and corruption in the non-elect. And if there should 
be the smallest flaw in the virtue of these others, — any 
trace of inferior and selfish motive, any relaxation of the 
purest moral principle, — what would follow but an utter 
and complete denial of all virtue and all difference of 
right and wrong ? 



136 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

This radical moral skepticism, this infidelity of the 
heart, is the worst moral disease that can befall a 
man. And nothing seems more certain to lead men 
into it, than first to assure them that naturally they are 
capable of no good thing, and that their imperfection 
is total depravity in the eye of God, and then to 
offer them the example of just the same imperfec- 
tion, — a little modified, perhaps, but not very palpably 
different in kind, — as the only substitute. The other 
extreme, of bigotry, and merciless persecution of those 
whom God is supposed to have deserted and cursed, 
I need not dwell on now. At the present day we 
do not see so much of it, or in its coarser forms. 
But this moral skepticism, which knows no holiness 
in duty, no loftiness of aim, no difference of right and 
wrong, — this is warning enough against a system which 
declares beforehand that in man's natural estate there is 
and can be nothing to correspond to these judgments of 
our moral sense. 

Such a system we find in the Orthodox doctrine of 
total native depravity. As we have seen, its evidence 
is uncertain and unsound ; its full signification so fright- 
ful, that its best advocates are gradually recoiling from it 
in alarm ; its terms at the same time such as to allow 
of no abatement, no concession, no compromise, with- 
out destroying its distinctive meaning ; and its whole 
character calculated to bewilder the simple, stimulate 
the bad, and sow the seeds of radical and utter skepti- 
cism as to all moral and religious truth. Such is the 
doctrine which has too long held its place as the founda- 
tion of Christian ethics, — a doctrine which we rejoice 
is giving way, though slowly, before the light of a purer 
interpretation of Christianity. 



DISCOURSE VII. 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

HE THAT SOWETH TO HIS FLESH SHALL OF THE FLESH REAP COR- 
RUPTION J BUT HE THAT SOWETH TO THE SPIRIT SHALL OF 
THE SPIRIT REAP LIFE EVERLASTING. Gal. vi. 8. 

I have now examined, one by one, the several doc- 
trines of Orthodoxy, as they bear on the Divine economy 
generally, the nature of God, and on the moral con- 
ditions under which we live. A further point remains : 
that, namely, which refers to the destination of mankind 
in the future world. No nation of men has ever existed 
which did not believe, more or less clearly, in immor- 
tality, No system of religion has ever been taught, 
which did not have some answer as to this topic of 
solemn and awful inquiry. And our purpose now is to 
inquire, What answer does Orthodoxy give, and with 
what sort of anticipations does it bid men look for- 
ward to the unseen world ? What evidence does it offer 
to sustain its assertions, and what are the merits and 
advantages of the view which it presents ? 

In answer to these questions we may say, in brief, 
that the Orthodox doctrine of the future world is of a 
12* 



138 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

piece with the whole system of which it forms a part. 
Its style of assertion is the same ; the nature of its 
evidence is the same ; and the intrinsic objections which 
we have found lying against the other features of the 
scheme apply here in equal or added strength. What 
that doctrine is in general, I have implied or asserted all 
along. I have shown how the very nature of the scheme 
under review requires endless perdition to be presup- 
posed of the natural condition of the human race ; and 
that this idea, in all its strictness, must be held, as offer- 
ing the only motive for Christ to make, or man to ac- 
cept, the sacrifice of atonement. As it is essential 
to the significance of the scheme throughout, so it makes 
its fitting crown and consummation. It forms the point 
of appeal in all the representations of that style of theol- 
ogy ; it is very confidently supposed to be proved by the 
explicit terms of Scripture ; and, by its vague terror, it 
doubtless does very much to perpetuate the hold of that 
system upon the general mind. Respecting a doctrine 
so tenaciously held, so vehemently urged, our investiga- 
tion should be serious and deliberate. I ask your atten- 
tion, therefore, to a careful inquiry as to its character 
and its proof. 

The nature of my argument, appealing in the severest 
manner to reason, and not to passion or imagination, 
does not allow me to prejudice you beforehand with 
highly-wrought statements of what the popular idea of 
hell implies. I should be sorry to offend your taste by 
descriptions that to me are simply repulsive and barbar- 
ous. I am willing not to hold the majority of Orthodox 
believers responsible for such pictures of the future world ; 
to regard them merely as the imagery, coarse, revolting, 
and grotesque, by which a certain class of minds have 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 139 

sought to express a sincere horror of sin, and an honest 
sense of the penalty it deserves. As you know, many 
persons make free use of such imagery, without remorse 
or scruple. Taking the hint from some figurative de- 
scriptions in Scripture, they have accumulated unspar- 
ingly material images of horror. And not unfrequently 
they have deliberately tried to harrow up men's feelings, 
by drawing on their fancy for exaggerated comparisons 
of the supposed tortures of hell with those of racks, 
flames, and the horrible enginery of the Inquisition ; or 
else have outraged their affection, by declaring that God 
so schools and disciplines the minds of the saints in 
glory, that pan of the joys of heaven will be to witness 
the infinite and hopeless agonies of the damned. 

All appeals and descriptions such as these, though 
still included in the coarse popular representations of 
Christianity, I shall dismiss with very few words of com- 
ment. I consider them simply as showing a morbid and 
distempered condition of the mind. Their plainest state- 
ment is their plainest refutation. They are heathen in 
their origin and barbarous in their spirit. Reduced to 
their plain meaning, and taken in connection with the 
other kindred doctrines of election, predestination, and 
natural depravity, they are bald and shocking blasphemy, 
without a parallel in any system of paganism that the 
world has known. Heathen religions have indeed repre- 
sented a jealous and remorseless deity as exacting to the 
uttermost the hardest penalty they could conceive ; but 
even they scarce dared deliberately to sum up the full 
meaning of the word eternal, as applied to such a doom, 
and above all, they never committed the tenfold horror 
of ascribing it to a perfect God. A deity treacherous, 
licentious, cruel, cowardly, and in terror for his throne, 



140 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

might be imagined capable of exacting such a penalty, if 
he had the power ; for to such a one there was no need 
of pretending it to be right. It was reserved for the 
incongruous blending of the worst horror of pagan super- 
stition with the Christian theory of an infinite and perfect 
God, to affirm and justify such a sentence as that passed 
on a large majority of the human race. 

One word more, that we may have fairly done with 
the extreme and revolting form in which this doctrine 
has been held. The moral argument against it, as soon 
as it is once announced, is so strong and imperative, as 
utterly to overbear any possible attempt at proof. It is 
useless to talk of evidence for a proposition so intrin- 
sically frightful and incredible. Insist as you will upon 
strict interpretation of the Christian Scriptures ; still, to 
a healthy mind that knows what it is about, it is only to 
present a plain alternative. Granting the authority of 
the record, there must be some mistake about its mean- 
ing. Granting the accuracy of the interpretation, there 
must be some fault in the authority. I cannot suppose it 
possible that any man can seriously maintain that any 
writing or tradition whatsoever, never so imposingly 
vouched or implicitly received, 'should be able, in the 
name of God, to overthrow all ideas of his mercy or 
justice or power, as such a doctrine must do. Cover 
it over with what phraseology we will, — and putting 
out of sight just now all the bearing it may have on us 
individually as men, — the statement is a flat declaration 
that God has failed in the great purpose of his creation, 
and in spite of his wisdom, omnipotence, and love, he 
has been unable to make the universe in great part any 
thing but a wreck, a dungeon, a house of horror, an 
eternal monument of his baffled will and vindictive wrath. 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 141 

A sound mind, say what we will, cannot agree to such a 
statement ; and the more closely the argument for it 
is pressed, the more evident is the way of escape — 
if that is the only one — to infidelity. I should feel 
humiliated to use any other argument in reference to 
it than this one appeal to your honest sense of right 
and wrong. 

I am willing to believe that the real meaning of those 
who contend for the Orthodox doctrine of retribution is 
different from the gross and material view which we have 
been considering. Even here I have said nothing of the 
physical absurdity involved in the idea of the two separ- 
ate, eternal kingdoms of absolute bliss and woe, — the 
material heaven, with its continual light and music and its 
pavement of trodden gold, the material hell, with flame 
and chains and instruments of horrid torture. I have 
spoken only of the moral idea contained ; and this, in 
great measure, applies to every form in which the doc- 
trine of vindictive punishment can be held. Still, I will 
grant its defenders the benefit of the admission, that they 
do not intend strictly the two visible and outward regions 
of happiness and torture ; that they regard the material 
images as symbols of a spiritual fact ; and that the chas- 
tisement and vengeance of guilt they speak of are in- 
flicted on the living spirit, not the organized frame, and 
in virtue of laws deep and fundamental in the constitution 
of the soul itself. This is a great, and to many will ap- 
pear a dangerous admission for my argument ; but in 
spite of it, I shall hope to make that good. 

This much, then, of spiritual meaning, I consider to 
be essentially involved in the Orthodox dogma, when 
stripped of its material imagery : that the penalty for 



142 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

sin is absolute and final, affecting the everlasting con- 
dition of the soul ; that it has no object to serve in the 
possible reformation of the offender, and no respite to 
hope from Divine justice ; that there is not only the 
moral retribution of all wrong which the reason knows 
and the conscience feels, and which in some degree 
affects all men, good or bad, but that there is super- 
added to this an arbitrary and inexpiable doom, when 
the sum of a man's offences has reached a certain point ; 
that in the laws of the Divine government there is in 
strictness of speech an u unpardonable sin," of which 
the penalty is " eternal death"; that the chastisement of 
conscience, the agony of remorse, is not for warning, 
but for vengeance ; and that, though repentance were 
conceivable, it must go on hopelessly aggravated without 
end, a blank and pitiless and fruitless horror ; and, in fine, 
that all we know on earth of the stings of self-condemna- 
tion and reproach, of terror at one's own haunting accu- 
ser in his conscious heart, of the unspeakable agony of 
soul which makes guilty men choose the shame of ex- 
posure and the punishment of human laws and the coun- 
tenance of the Eternal Judge before their silent convic- 
tion of wrong, is but a type of the penalty in store for the 
future world, where God arbitrarily imposes it as the 
final doom of man's guilt. This, I say, is involved 
necessarily in the Orthodox dogma, and by many sup- 
posed to be involved in the very fact of sin. And I 
present it thus, apart from images of a morbid fancy, 
and apart from the aggravation of making it jhe doom 
of simple unbelief, that we may be clear and untram- 
melled in speaking of it. The only points we have now 
to consider are its evidence and its intrinsic character. 
Under these two heads I shall comprehend what I have 
to say of my reasons for rejecting it. 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 143 

I. The evidence of a doctrine that concerns so 
nearly the fundamental laws of our moral constitution 
ought to be most severely scrutinized, and to abide all 
investigation clear and unimpeachable. It is in this 
character, as professing to pronounce with authority, on 
grounds wholly different from those on which scientific 
or philosophic truth is established, that w T e should view 
it very critically. The philosophical belief of some men, 
it is true, is very similar to the substance of this doc- 
trine ; but in their case it rests on the reading of their 
moral consciousness, and may be confirmed or over- 
thrown by a profounder method of philosophy. Not so 
with this. It rests on evidence extrinsic, and outwardly 
binding. It is sustained on authority, — the authority of 
texts and their interpretation. Comprising a philosophy 
of sin, its proof is critical and Scriptural, not philo- 
sophical. Of the essential idea I shall speak more fully 
towards the close of my remarks, and state my objec- 
tions generally to this view of sin and its consequences. 
At present my purpose is to show that it is not neces- 
sarily implied, or positively taught, in the words of the 
Christian Scriptures. The burden of proof being thrown 
upon that side, I wish to show that the evidence is not 
strong enough to bear it. 

The Bible evidently all along assumes the fact of 
retribution, or actual punishment of sin ; and this in the 
future world as well as the present, heightened, too, by 
all the conscience may suggest as to our desert, and by 
all the imagination may represent of a condition stripped 
of the defences and disguises that shield and cover guilt 
in the present life. Indeed, this seems a necessary part 
of our moral constitution. Once presuming the immor- 
tality of the soul, that is, the continuance of our con- 



144 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

scious being, we cannot possibly divorce it from the con- 
sequences of cherished wrong. If there is a future life, 
it must bear the impress of the present. The soul 
passes over to that state such as it has become during*its 
probation here. Memory, if nothing more, must be an 
indissoluble bond between the two spheres of being. 
Abolish memory, and to all intents and purposes you 
abolish the soul itself. Cut off the communion of con- 
sciousness between this life and that to come, and you cut 
off all connection of the vital principle, as completely as, 
by damming up a stream, you destroy its flow or com- 
pel it to start afresh. It is another stream then, and not 
the same, though the water may be identical. Now it is 
the peculiarity of all religious language, that it is pro- 
foundly imbued with this idea of the indissoluble con- 
sciousness of the moral life. It places its motive in 
the future, because to it that is as the present. It bids 
us act for another life, because to it that is all one with 
this, and equally near. And it would be impossible to 
frame a religious statement, exhortation, or appeal, ad- 
dressed to our moral nature, that should not, in express 
terms or by clear implication, involve the certainty of 
moral retribution, in clearness and strength proportioned 
to the earnestness of the sentiment or appeal itself. 

This is precisely what we find throughout in the lan- 
guage of the Bible. What have been taken as threaten- 
ings or positive statements of the sinner's future doom 
may be considered (if we please) simply as forebodings 
of the human consciousness, deeply impressed with the 
reality of the future state. I do not say at present that 
this is their only meaning ; but for my immediate purpose 
it may be regarded as their essential meaning. That 
is, whatever else the language of Scripture may imply, 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 145 

it certainly does manifest a most deep and lively and 
solemn sense of the reality of the great fact of moral 
retribution, — a fact eternally true, involved in the first 
elements of our moral nature, and working perpetually 
to the reward or punishment of every act and thought. 
In the words of the passage from which my text is taken, 
u God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall 
of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the 
spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting." I do not 
deem it necessary to say any thing more of the general 
tone of Scripture language, than that it is pervaded out 
and out by this profound moral consciousness, and that 
it certainly employs the very strongest terms in speaking 
of the penalty that impends over human sin. So far as 
it concerns the reality of retribution, in this world or the 
world to come, the common-sense interpretation seems 
the only true or possible interpretation. 

But when we go beyond the simple fact, and etfme to 
descriptions of the nature and mode of the penalty for 
sin, we must guard against being misled by phrases of 
speech which indicate merely the mental habits and 
associations of those who used them. A certain style of 
imagery is used in many parts of the Scriptures, alluding, 
as every scholar knows, to local customs and memories ; 
and out of this have been framed most of the popular 
notions on the subject. Such words as Gehenna, or 
Hell, u the worm that dieth not" and "the fire that 
is not quenched," from which most of the usual phrases 
and descriptions are derived, were not used at first in 
any thing like the strict dogmatic, technical meaning 
they afterwards came to bear. It is to be observed 
that the phraseology is not Christian, but Jewish. It 
13 



146 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

is addressed, not to Christians generally, but to Jews. 
It occurs a few times in the Gospels, where Jesus is 
warning Jews of the certain 'consequences of obstinate 
guilt, and where he uses the well-known forms of speech 
found in the Prophets and other Hebrew writers, and 
once besides in the Epistle of James, Bishop of Jeru- 
salem, — never once in the writings of either John or 
Paul. In by far the larger portion of the Testament, 
the language used to express the fact of retribution ap- 
plies only (or most readily) to the spiritual law that 
makes sin the death and curse of the soul. In a very 
few passages, this is impressed and enlarged on by the 
familiar Jewish images of horror to which I have al- 
luded. 

Thus there are two Greek words rendered " Hell." 
One, Hades, signifies simply the grave, or the gloomy 
realm of death, as when Jesus says Capernaum shall be 
" brought down to hell," i. e. death or ruin. The 
other, Gehenna, is the Greek for "vale of Hinnom," — 
a place alluded to several times in the Old Testament. 
It was a valley near Jerusalem, desecrated to the re- 
ligious memory by the ancient sacrifices made in bar- 
barous times to Moloch, the god of war. Little children 
were scorched to death in the arms of a brazen idol, or 
burned in the fire that blazed at his feet, while drums beat 
to drown the horrid cries of mother and babe. Hence the 
valley was called Tophet, or u the drum," — afterwards 
the vale of Hinnom, or Gehenna ; and this is translated 
ct Hell," which is a word in the old Scandinavian my- 
thology having precisely the same meaning as the Greek 
word Hades, i. e. realm of the departed. The refuse 
of the temple sacrifice, and the unburied bodies of male- 
factors, were cast out there to be consumed by the 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 147 

never-dying worm, or burned in the perpetual fire. And 
since it stood to the Jewish mind for the image of all 
horror and impurity, both from its frightful associations 
of old and the ghastly sight it offered now, it formed the 
most appropriate and striking picture of the horror of a 
thoroughly corrupt and guilty soul. Interpreting it in 
the strictest sense, we might give its spiritual meaning 
thus : — that the flames of this ghastly and sombre val- 
ley, consuming the loathsome impurity of the relics of 
death, are but the type of that avenging and purifying 
fire of the conscience that never dies, burning out the 
foul and cherished corruption of a bad heart. That is, 
it will bear this meaning full as well as any other. We 
cannot strictly and literally, but only by dim and remote 
analogies, interpret such imagery into a trustworthy spir- 
itual sense. 

And this general remark applies equally well to the 
language of the Apocalypse, w 7 hich at first sight seems 
even more awful and explicit, but which in fact is sub- 
stantially the same, except that its sea of fire and brim- 
stone seems borrowed from the-Greek and Roman de- 
scriptions of Tartarus, rather than from any Hebrew 
sources. Italy is a volcanic country ; and the familiar 
imagery of Roman writers in reference to the " world 
below " is taken (as is well known) from the ordinary 
phenomena of such a country. And it is w 7 orth while 
to observe that this book is addressed to Christians un- 
der Roman power, perhaps in Rome itself, and suffer- 
ing under Roman persecution. A glance will show the 
difference of its style from any thing that was ever ad- 
dressed to Jews. 

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus furnishes 
another example of the Scripture style. Its evident in- 



148 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

tention is, to show the utter mockery and futility of the 
outward distinctions and gaudy sfiows of the world, 
which most excite men's ambition, desire, and rivalry. 
The proud rich man and the poor leprous beggar 
meet face to face before the equal eye of God and of 
eternity, and the only distinction held valid there is 
that which stamps the one good, the other bad, morally ; 
and the most touching thing of all is the humiliation 
and debasement which that proud heart acknowledges. 
Beyond this we cannot go with any certainty. As to 
the general air and phraseology, they are very much 
such as one meets in citations from old Jewish apo- 
logues and commentaries, which contain so large a pro- 
portion of the recorded Hebrew thought. Such inci- 
dents and scenes, introducing the patriarchs and person- 
ages of the Old Testament, have always made a staple 
of the moral instruction of the Jews, and, I believe, do 
still. A grave, traditionary, legendary people, with a 
stronger sense of religious and ritual law than of accu- 
rate history, their mind delights in clothing every moral 
thought or point of instruction in the antiquated garb of 
the most remote age.* Into the scenes and retributions 
of the life to come, they still introduced the same fa- 
miliar personages as characters in the same class of mor- 
al apologues. Abraham and Moses, the patriarchs and 
prophets, personified the existences of the future, as of 
the past and present, moral world. And this mental 
characteristic accounts fully, I think, for the outward 
and peculiar features of a parable addressed to them. 
It cannot be literally and precisely interpreted, without 
great confusion and even absurdity of thought. It can- 

* See instances of this in Strauss's comments on the Temptation of 
Jesus. 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 149 

not be carried much beyond the plain and simple hint 
already given, without disturbing our ideas of an equita- 
ble retribution, and injuring the simplicity there should 
be in our view of the spiritual world. Jesus meant to 
teach quite a different lesson, than to let in our human 
glance to rest on the mysteries of futurity. We receive 
the lesson, illustrated and impressed by the imagery and 
style most familiar to his hearers' minds ; and beyond 
that we do not care to go. 

I think enough has now been said to show the impos- 
sibility of reasoning strictly from the terms of any im- 
agery in the Testament, as to positive facts in the con- 
dition of the future world. Indeed, for purposes of 
argument, it is not too much to say that the whole field 
is narrowed down to one point, the interpretation of a 
single word. This is the word (or kindred words) so 
often rendered eternal, or everlasting, or eternity.* The 
same expression is used of the life and of the death of 
the soul in the future state ; and the most valid and 
plausible argument is, that we have as much reason to 
expect unending torture on the one hand as unending 
blessedness on the other. The same word is used for 
both ; and we have no authority to distinguish between 
them : and make this mean everlasting, and that of lim- 
ited duration. Concerning this — the centre and sum 
of the reasoning for eternal punishment — we may re- 
mark a few things. 

First, if the soul is immortal by nature, and inde- 
structible in essence, we do not need to make the dis- 
tinction spoken of. We say that sin in the course of 
time will probably be outgrown and purged away ; while 

# AIq>v, alavios. 

13* 



150 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

the soul lives for ever, in virtue of its inherent immor- 
tality. Any other shade of meaning that will fit the 
sense, and can be shown to belong to the word, may be 
employed, and the true doctrine of the future life is not 
touched on or impaired. 

Next, granting to this word the strict meaning " ever- 
lasting " in many passages, it does not follow that this 
is the only meaning. In two to one of the places where 
it is found, it must at any rate refer to what is transitory 
and not everlasting, (as where it signifies " the present 
world, with its cares, temptations, and desires,"*) and 
it is quite optional with us in what sense we will under- 
stand it of the penalty of guilt. At most, it can only 
be made out that the same expression is used in speak- 
ing of this which is also used in some cases to express 
duration without end ; but we have not the least hint, 
except from our general w T ay of viewing the subject, as 
to the sense in which we shall take it here. i\nd so, in 
strictness, our argument fails us at the very point where 
it was to be applied. 

And once more, this word, so far from bearing the 
test of rigid critical investigation, becomes vague and 
undecided, and unfit to bear the pressure of the dogma 
that is built upon it. It breaks down under the weight, 
or it dissipates from its compactness and consistency, 
and becomes unfit to be used for such a purpose. When 
looked at through the glass of scientific criticism, instead 
of retaining its sharp marks and boundaries, like a crys- 
tal, it expands into something vague and cloudy, like a 
nebulous star, which to the eye seems distinct enough, 
but a blur comes on it when looked at through a tel- 

* Robinson's N. T. Lexicon, s. v. 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 151 

escope. And this word, on which the whole argument 
is built, appears in its primary and essential meaning not 
to indicate duration, but life or breath. It is at least an 
open question, whether its radical signification is "always 
existing " or u spiritually existing " ; and therefore it 
cannot be used with any confidence as an argument. In 
form, it is the participle of a well-known verb, signifying 
" to breathe." In strictness of speech, it does not show 
the punishment of sin to be eternal, but speaks of it as 
affecting the very life, the vital principle of the soul it- 
self.* It leaves us free to reason as we will of the ul- 
timate consequences of guilt ; meanwhile warning us, in 
the most solemn and emphatic manner, of the harm that 
is wrought in the degradation, the corruption, the bond- 
age, the torture, of the living spirit that has harboured 
the evil thing. The life of the soul, not the duration 
of the term of its chastisement, is the idea conveyed 
by the most strict and accurate rendering of this phrase. 
Without going more minutely into the critical discus- 
sion of words and phrases, I think we have found enough 
to assure us confidently of the following result : — that 
we are not entitled to interpret literally, or press very 
closely, the language of parables or imagery addressed 
to Jews and pagans ; that the phraseology of the Tes- 
tament, so far as it can be relied on to prove any thing 
as to future punishment, is reduced to the exposition of 
a single word, and that this word, so far from sustaining 
the Orthodox idea, is at best uncertain and variable in 
its meaning, and in all probability refers to an entirely 
different order of thought. So that, at the end of our 
inquiry, we find ourselves at the same liberty as at first 

* Christian Examiner for 1828. 



152 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

(even on the strictest view of Scripture inspiration) to 
interpret sin and its penalty according to our best and 
highest thought in general as to religious things. Let us 
consider, then, briefly, the character of the doctrine we 
are reviewing, and how far it may be superseded by a 
more spiritual view. 

II. The habit of regarding the retribution of the future 
life as simply penal in its nature and strictly endless in 
duration has given rise to a way of thinking on the sub- 
ject which I cannot but consider false and hurtful ; 
false, because it contradicts what we seem to know most 
clearly of the moral constitution of the soul, and hurtful, 
because it obscures our view of natural justice, the true 
character of sin, and the attributes of a perfect God. 
Of many wrong and strange notions on kindred topics I 
have spoken distinctly enough before. But there are 
others which belong peculiarly to the subject under re- 
view ; and as Christianity has been made responsible for 
so many errors, it seems essential to show its intrinsic 
harmony with the highest views we can gain respecting 
all matters connected with the spiritual life. 

The first is, that the generally received opinion of 
punishment arbitrarily affixed to guilt, and having no 
reference to possible contrition and amendment, has 
blinded men very much to the natural and necessary 
consequences of guilt. The whole doctrine of retribu- 
tion, as wrought out by the essential laws of our moral 
nature, has been overlaid and falsified. Hence have aris- 
en confusion and error without measure. For instance, 
while no one has thought of positively denying such retri- 
bution, it has been left to physiologists or philosophers 
to illustrate, and cast aside entirely from men's religious 
opinion, as if it had no place there. The penalty of sin 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 153 

has been supposed to be arbitrary, having nothing to do 
with the terms and conditions of the present life, but 
superadded to these, and referred exclusively to another 
world. And hence a profound skepticism among many 
as to the very fact itself. Sin has been held to belong 
only to the present life and the bodily organization ; and 
the profound connection that must always subsist be- 
tween this and the spiritual world, in virtue of our per- 
sonal identity, has been denied or overlooked. On the 
one hand, presuming on the goodness of God, it has 
been said he could not inflict arbitrary and endless, aim- 
less pain ; so that one who succeeds in drowning con- 
science here, and shuffles along through life in reckless 
guilt, escapes all consequences, and has nothing to dread 
in the life to come, and enters that unseen state on a 
perfect equality, in every spiritual privilege, with the 
noblest, purest, and best of men, — of course destroying 
utterly all vital connection between this life and the other, 
and making that virtually an arbitrary new creation : and, 
on the other hand, men have been encouraged to think 
that on certain set conditions, by penance or peculiar 
personal experience, the most corrupt and hardened 
wretch can be miraculously made anew, and put on an 
equal level in an instant with the most glorious saints in 
light. It is hard to say which view is more fatal to 
a sound feeling of moral responsibility, or more danger- 
ous in the temptation it holds out to daring guilt. 

Another error into which men have been led by this 
doctrine is that they talk vaguely of sin in the abstract 
and the " infinite" punishment it deserves, instead of 
soberly looking at the fact, and graduating their judgment 
of it by the degrees of real guilt. The futility of all 
attempts to reason out a doctrine by postulates of what 



154 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

is infinite, I trust, has been sufficiently illustrated and ex- 
posed before. # We cannot with any safety reason from 
what to our mind appears as infinite. If we say that 
human sin deserves an infinite degree of punishment, 
because committed against a Being of absolute power 
and perfection, it follows just as clearly, from the same 
postulate, that human virtue deserves infinite reward. 
And since probably no man is without his virtues and 
no man is without his faults, it follows that the two infin- 
ites cancel each other, and there is left to judge men by 
only the finite element, which is the act or the motive 
for which each one feels himself personally responsible. 
And so the whole doctrine, as to its philosophical basis, 
is swept away. 

Besides, it is not true that the conscience, any more 
than the reason, acknowledges strictly infinite degrees of 
guilt. At most it is only a popular form of speech, the 
force of which disappears as soon as we measure it by 
any, the simplest test. To show my meaning more 
plainly by an historical example. Robert, the eldest 
son of William the Norman, conqueror of England, was 
a bold, fierce, cruel man ; and for many years was en- 
gaged in the most barbarous, revolting, and unpardonable 
crime that perhaps a man can commit, — that is, fighting 
in deadly hate and conflict with his own father and broth- 
ers, fiercely and relentlessly trampling down the rights, 
happiness, and liberties of the people dependent on his 
mercy. It was a cruel and parricidal family, and the 
fashion of war in those days was savage and unmerciful. 
Once he was only prevented by accident from taking his 
own father's* life. Now it happened afterwards that he was 

* Page 104. 



ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 155 

captured by his own brother, Henry the First of Eng- 
land, and put in prison ; and failing in the attempt to es- 
cape, his brother had him more closely guarded, and both 
his eyes burnt out with a pan of heated brass. And so 
he remained in prison, blind and miserable, till about the 
age of eighty years. Now I say, that, in any case that 
appeals like this to our imagination and human feeling, — 
when we consider the long and dreary lapse of time, the 
old man's whitening hairs and decaying strength, the 
fierce play of baffled passion, the bitter memory of the 
past, — we unavoidably feel that, for mere vengeance, 
tenfold has been exacted for any amount of previous 
crime ; and our horror of his misdeeds is lost in our exe- 
cration of the savage tyranny of his gaoler. This is a 
strong case, both of guilt and its apparent penalty ; but 
consider how infinitely it falls short of the least of the 
horrors in the popular idea of hell, — how far more mild 
and merciful his doom than that which theologians say is 
inflicted on simple unbelief, by an inexorable and angry 
God ! Then, again, consider how brief and fragmentary 
human life is at best. Nero and Commodus, two of the 
worst of the Roman emperors, whose names stand for 
all that is monstrous, inhuman, profligate, and tyrannical, 
perished each at about the age of thirty. Some mon- 
sters of wickedness have been not much more than dis- 
eased children. There is no such thing possible as to 
frame in our imagination the idea of crime such as to 
deserve infinite punishment, coolly and easily as we may 
state it in the language of our creeds. 

But my final and strongest objection to the doctrine 
under review is, that it misstates and falsifies the real 
essence and purpose of retribution. It is not for the 
purpose of inflicting vengeance, but for the sake of rows- 



156 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

ing the moral consciousness, that God has affixed so 
dread and terrible consequences to human guilt. As 
soon as the retribution begins to work, we see its moral 
meaning plain enough. It is only before it begins to 
work, while the mind seems obstinately to brace itself 
against it, that we feel higher and higher degrees of it to 
be deserved, — deserved, because required. Vengeance 
is turned to pity at the first symptom of relenting. And 
this, by all the analogies we have, seems to be the signi- 
fication of moral pain. All suffering, so far as we can 
trace it out and be sure we understand it, is either disci- 
plinary and remedial, or else the symptom, and therefore 
the merciful warning, of disease. To these two classes 
it may all be reduced. It is never without its use. The 
nerve of sensation is the sentinel of the citadel of life. 
The vital parts themselves have not the feeling of pain, 
but only the avenues of approach to them. It would be 
wanton torture if these were susceptible, which, being 
once touched, the life itself is gone irrecoverably ; and 
the agony of the most violent disease is only the result of 
what in its first intention was most kind and merciful. 

So it is in the natural world ; and so we may safely 
reason over to the spiritual world. We are justified in 
assuming, that suffering of any sort ends not with itself; 
and that to all men there is the certainty, or at any rate 
the possibility, of recovery to health. Bodily diseases 
yield before scientific skill, though only to a limited 
degree, since the body itself is mortal ; and the soul that 
can never die must be capable always of restoration to 
moral life. u The wages of sin is death "; not torture 
without end, which would be frightful and wanton cru- 
elty, but the loss and decay of vital force. How near 
we may approach to brute unconsciousness and moral 



ETEKNAL PUNISHMENT. ' 157 

death, we know not. The Scripture speaks of those 
u whose conscience is seared as with a hot iron," so 
that they have apparently lost, for a time at least, the 
sense of pain. But, in the infinite resources of God's 
providence, in the prevailing power of his spirit, which 
infolds the soul more nearly in the spiritual world, we 
may never dare say absolutely and finally that there is no 
hope. And, as returning pain is a sign of returning 
animation, and so a source of hope, — as the first favor- 
able symptom in the treatment of a drowning or swoon- 
ing man is q. pain far more sharp and bitter than any that 
preceded his loss of consciousness, — so, in the possible 
recovery from moral or spiritual death, deep mortifica- 
tion and shame, and the sharp agony of grief, are far 
more favorable symptoms than the numbness and stu- 
por of the moral sense that went before. 

Not for unavailing torture, but for life and hope, does 
God visit the offending soul with the stings of chastise- 
ment and remorse. Not that he will put salvation on us 
from without, or urge on us a compulsory restoration ; 
but that, to a being endowed with moral freedom, the 
choice must in the nature of things be always open ; the 
great alternative of right or wrong must always lie before 
him. And, whatever the visitation of pain and mental 
agony, it is always a sign that the soul is there ; and it 
may be an effectual, as it is a merciful, warning to sum- 
mon it back to holiness. Stern and bitter as may be the 
penalty, — inevitably the consequence and avenger of sin, 
— it is never so bitter but that it may be kindly meant, 
and the good to be regained is always worth a thousand- 
fold the pain and difficulty of the way. 

Such, in few and general terms, are the objections I 
find to the view of endless and hopeless punishment for 
14 # 



158 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. 

sin, apart from the gross and horrible way in which dis- 
eased fancy has represented it. The evidence from 
Scripture has been shown to be far from adequate to 
bear it out, while it shocks and confounds the best un- 
derstanding we can gain of sin and the consequence of 
sin. It leads us to overlook the true nature and extent 
of the retribution God has appointed in our moral nature ; 
it speaks to us falsely of human acts deserving the doom 
of an infinite penalty ; and, finally, it prevents our seeing 
the true moral and disciplinary uses of pain, without 
which the infliction of the penalty would be horrible and 
wanton cruelty. And in all these ways it obscures the 
true and most solemn view of retribution, which God is 
impressing on us by every fact of the outward world, by 
every phasis of our mental experience. " The future 
must answer for the present." This is eternally writ in 
nature, and repeated by the living word of God. The 
present is to prepare us for the future. This is equally 
and eternally and obviously true. " Whatsoever a man, 
soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth to his 
flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that sow- 
eth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting." 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT ; NOT OF THE LETTER, BUT OF THE SPIRIT ; 
FOR THE LETTER KILLETH, BUT THE SPIRIT GIVETH LIFE. — 

2 Corinthians iii. 6. 

In the discussion of all the preceding topics, I have 
endeavoured honestly to trace the sense of the Scrip- 
tures, and to show the insufficiency of their evidence, 
even by the most rigid rules of interpretation, to sustain 
the system of doctrines under review. I have pre- 
ferred hitherto to meet our opponents on their own 
ground ; to allow them all the benefit of a tribunal they 
claim to be infallible ; and to leave in abeyance the dis- 
cussion of those prior assumptions, of authority and in- 
spiration, which alone make it possible for any one to 
entertain, much less defend, the opinions we have been 
considering. And under this disadvantage I trust my 
leading proposition has been made good, — that the sys- 
tem of Orthodoxy, while open to all the objections first 
urged against it, does not make part of the legitimate 
sense of Scripture, and can be disproved by any intel- 
ligent believer in the Christian records. This is the 



160 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

conviction which must be left, I think, after fair inquiry, 
upon any candid mind. 

I haye now to go one step further, and show that the 
peculiar sort of authority claimed for the language of 
Scripture cannot be established ; that the attempt to 
make the Bible consist of a series of infallible proposi- 
tions, absolute and final as to all matters of belief, is 
vain and must always fail ; that it cannot be assumed as 
a principle of reasoning without leading to results con- 
tradictory and absurd ; that it fails of its end as a guide 
to any clear and consistent exposition of religious truth ; 
that it affords a handle to every abuse of superstition 
and extravagance ; that it is false to the purport and in- 
tention of the record, leads to casuistry, intolerance, and 
unbelief, while it destroys that liberality of mind and 
honest independence essential to the best results of hu- 
man character and human thought. All these evils, I 
am deeply convinced, grow out from the commonly pro- 
fessed opinion as to the inspiration of the Scriptures ; 
and in the course of my remarks I shall hope to make 
my propositions good. But first I must disembarrass 
myself of a few preliminary questions, lest the tenor of 
what I say should be perverted. 

It was very natural that men, having discarded the 
authority of the Roman Church, and still cleaving with 
strong conviction to the main points of their religious 
creed, should desire some other authority to take the 
place of that. The refuge was easy and natural from 
the infallibility of the Church to the infallibility of the 
Book. With a mind habituated and practised to de- 
pendence, they seemed afloat and astray without an ex- 
ternal support or guide. With few fundamental philo- 
sophic principles of truth established, — without the point 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY, 161 

of support we find in natural science, whose principles, 
so far as they go, are incontestably and for ever fixed, — 
without the habit of freely exercising thought in logical or 
critical discussion, — they inevitably craved what would 
give them even the semblance of an ultimate authority. 
The tribunal to which they would appeal must be as 
large and absolute as that they renounced ; and this 
they seemed to find in the record of God's revelations 
to his chosen race, covering a period of four thousand 
years. 

Then, too, the Bible, chance-discovered, had kindled 
their thought and nerved them with energy. Its decla- 
rations of the freedom of the religious life opened to 
them a whole new world of meaning in religion, opposed 
strongly to the barren traditions and ceremonies of the 
Church. Perhaps they had not entered into the pro- 
found symbolism of the doctrine and worship of the 
Middle Ages, — whether from the fault of their own 
mind, or from the corruptions by which that symbolism 
was overgrown ; but at any rate here was something 
which in its simplicity and strength came home to them. 
The teaching of the Bible to them was living, practical, 
glorious truth. And besides, the Bible furnished them 
their weapons to fight against the Church. It was a des- 
perate fight for them ; for within living memory that 
Church had put out its hand to persecute, and strike 
down, and slay ; its supremacy was almost uncontested, 
and hitherto it had succeeded in crushing each heresy 
as it rose. In that emergency, the Bible, and the Bible 
only, was the defence of Protestants. Translated into 
the mother tongue, circulated everywhere among the 
people, and everywhere received with the same enthusi- 
astic reverence, as a new charter of emancipation, it set 
14 * 



162 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

on foot a movement that could sustain itself, — kindled 
a fire that would not go out. We must take all these 
things into the account, if we would understand the ven- 
eration the Reformers cherished for that book, and the 
unqualified claim they were the first to make for its 
sufficient, literal, and absolute inspiration. I would not 
have it thought that I disparage or deny the importance 
of this implicit reverence for the Bible, mixed though it 
was with error. It furnished, perhaps, the only possible 
point of transition from the faith of tradition to that of 
reason and liberty. Through its medium, the historical 
life of Christendom remains one, and loses not its con- 
tinuity. And in this regard its value cannot be over- 
estimated. It saved the world from the threatening al- 
ternative between Romanism and Infidelity. 

Again, I do not propose here to meet the fundamental 
question, as to the need and value of external authority 
to vouch for religious truth. Without doubt, as a mind 
is trained healthily and accustomed to reflect, it comes 
to feel less and less the pressure of such authority. 
Though its support may tacitly remain, yet it is less pal- 
pably felt. Still, some minds at all stages, and most 
minds at a certain stage, do undoubtedly feel the need 
of absolute and implicit reliance on the positive declara- 
tions of minds of a higher order ; and, a fortiori, on 
what stands to them as the express declaration of the 
God of truth. With this habit or disposition of the 
mind I have no intention to interfere. The question of 
authority as a guide in forming religious opinion, I shall 
leave untouched ; my only object being to show that it 
does not reside in the words and recorded forms of 
speech of the Bible, taken as a whole and without ex- 
ception. It it can be shown to exist at all, it is in the 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 163 

authentic declarations of one suitably commissioned and 
vouched as a messenger of God ; and the true point of 
inspiration will be his life, not the record of it, — his 
deeds and words, not the channel through which they 
are made known to us. 

And still further, in the critical discussion of the 
Scriptures I do not enter into the preliminary questions 
of the higher criticism ; namely, the possibility of mir- 
acles and the nature of a revelation. Such questions 
demand far ampler consideration than could be given 
here, and would far too much complicate the purpose 
I have in view. It may save trouble to accept the one 
broad line of distinction between the Old and New Tes- 
taments, — not just now on critical grounds, but because 
we are only occupied with what belongs properly to 
Christians. It would be wrong to supersede or antici- 
pate any historical or critical inquiry ; so the simplest 
course is to confine myself expressly, in the statement I 
am making, to the Christian Scriptures. For my im- 
mediate purpose I must assume their genuineness, — 
that they are rightly ascribed to their authors ; their 
authenticity, — that they are what they claim to be, the 
correct narrative of real events or addresses made on 
real occasions ; and their authority, — that, when rightly 
understood, they give us knowledge of truth which ought 
to be known, and precepts which ought to be obeyed. 
The life and works of Christ are of course the central 
point of the history, and the sanction of the doctrine, 
whatever it be, contained. 

And lastly, in the denial of that exclusive and infalli- 
ble inspiration claimed for the books of Scripture, I 
would not be understood as limiting the modes by which 
God may reveal himself, or as denying the reality of 



164 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

that inspiration, in the broader sense, which is the sign 
of his presence in the soul. This is included in the 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit, previously stated. How 
far it is real in any given case, and on what conditions 
it is bestowed, I do not care to say. To state the doc- 
trine scientifically is one thing, to feel it practically is 
quite another thing. In some sort and degree there is 
an inspiration accessible to all, — answering to the fact, 
which we all admit, of God's spiritual- presence. It is 
taken for granted in every act of prayer. The aspira- 
tion of man is for the inspiration of God. To what 
degree this may have been carried in some of the sacred 
writers, we need not try to define exactly ; but to me it 
seems not different in kind. Of course, it is quite a dif- 
ferent thing from personal infallibility, which none of 
these writers ever claim. To a certain extent it may be 
a man's guide to truth ; but by quickening and elevating 
his native powers, not by superseding them. At best 
he is, as Paul said, a u laborer together with God." 
The human element is always mixed and interwoven 
with the Divine, in the texture of his thought. This 
general fact of inspiration, in proportion to a man's faith 
and earnestness, I by no means deny or overlook. 

Having settled these previous points, let us see how 
much beyond them the Orthodox doctrine carries us. 
In its extreme form, it declares that every word in the 
Old and New Testaments is literally inspired and infal- 
libly true ; that the writers, men of various culture and 
at various times, were simply blind instruments, at most 
amanuenses, *to write verbally from the dictation of the 
Holy Spirit, — as pipes for water, or trumpets for 
sound, to carry the Divine thought into the human 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 165 

mind ; that nothing but the uncertainties of interpreta- 
tion, and the slight diversity of ancient copies, stands 
between us and an exact transcript of the mind of God ; 
that the books of Scripture, from first to last, are orderly 
and perfect parts of an harmonious, perfect whole ; that 
there is no confusion, contradiction, or error, — or what 
seems so is due to our fallible mind, not to any imper- 
fection there ; and that the whole array of history, mira- 
cle, prophecy, genealogy, hymn, or doctrine is but an 
expansion, and illustration, and confirmation of the one 
great " plan of salvation," which runs through it all, and 
is implied in its every word. 

As to this extreme form of statement, I consider it 
rather as giving men's theory of what a revelation ought 
to be, than their account of what the Scripture revela- 
tion is. There is nothing in the Bible to give us the 
least hint of such a doctrine. It would be easy to show 
its absurdity from any page that should be opened at 
random. Varieties of style, diversities of account, col- 
lision of precept, obscurity of expression, are each an 
insuperable objection to it. The evidence is so plain 
and easy which overthrows it, that one wonders how 
it could ever have got footing among men anywhere. 
What a glance at any chapter, almost at any verse, 
w r ould practically overthrow, deserves no serious refu- 
tation. I cannot suppose for a moment that any one 
would undertake its serious defence. 

The form of the doctrine with which we have to deal, 
very variously modified, is something like the following. 
It assumes three degrees or grades of inspiration, to one 
of which every passage in the Bible is to be referred. 
Either the Holy Spirit exercised a certain supervision 
and restraint, guarding the writers from any possible 



166 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

mistake in narrating events which they knew traditionally 
or by other natural means, and prompting them to select 
those most important to be known ; or their minds were 
supernaturally raised and strengthened by the infusion of 
a Divine influence, so that they could discourse in a style 
of fancy or energy vastly beyond the natural power of 
any man, yet each according to the peculiarity of his 
own gifts and habit ; or lastly, truth was miraculously 
revealed to them, — knowledge of heavenly mysteries 
and future times, — which otherwise would have been 
for ever concealed from men. 

Thus Inspiration becomes a threefold fact, exhibited 
in three different modes. These are technically called 
the inspiration of Superintendence , of Elevation, and of 
Suggestion. And I take the doctrine in this form, both 
because it is intelligible and consistent, and because 
(expressing " the latest and best views") it is supposed 
to be free from many of the difficulties that beset the 
former theory. It allows for differences in style ; it 
relieves the doctrine from the charge of maintaining 
every detail of biography or genealogy to have been 
taught with equal weight and authority of Divine dicta- 
tion with the most momentous truth ; and it corresponds 
to the very evident gradation we find in the value of the 
contents of Scripture. Judging merely by the former 
theory, unqualified, we have no right to assume the sol- 
emn assurance of a future life and judgment to be of 
more moment to us than the number of slain on a Philis- 
tine battle-field, or the family register of the dukes of 
Edom. God having been pleased to reveal them all, it 
is our part to receive them with the same unquestioning 
reverence. To discriminate with our depraved reason 
among the Divine communications would be daring im- 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 167 

piety. This intrinsic difficulty is in great part done 
away by the more careful and discriminating statement 
which I have given. 

But in the main characteristic feature these two state- 
ments coincide. That is, they maintain that the Book 
not only contains the revelation, but that it is the revela- 
tion. The obvious,, apparent advantage of this doctrine 
is, that in the Bible we have a direct communication 
from heaven, — to all intents and purposes as direct and 
trustworthy as that made to the prophets or apostles 
themselves. A book is put into our hand, which we can 
trust implicitly, and take its statements as coming at first 
hand from God ; having (in the words of Locke) L \ God 
for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without 
any mixture of error, for its matter." The sense of its 
authors is in all respects infallible, unadulterated truth ; 
its statements, of whatever sort, are authority beyond 
denial or dispute for points of history, science, theology, 
or morals. And, according to a favorite argument of 
some persons, the whole business of religious investiga- 
tion is reduced to the task of simple interpretation. 
With grammar and dictionary, and competent knowl- 
edge of the Greek and Hebrew tongues, we have the 
only possible outfit, and all we want, for discovering 
every needful thing of truth or duty. Reason cannot 
prejudge, or science contradict, or experience and inves- 
tigation overrule, any tiling that is set down in the Scrip- 
tures, or by fair interpretation made out from them ; 
and verbal or historical criticism is forestalled when it 
reaches a certain point, because all else must yield to 
the prior assumption, that there can be no error found in 
them. This is the doctrine which we have now to con- 
sider. And I propose to show, first, that it is assumed 



168 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

on insufficient evidence, and cannot be sustained ; next, 
that it is not consistently held by its advocates, and does 
not answer its end as an infallible test of morals or doc- 
trine ; and, lastly, that it is hurtful to the religious char- 
acter, and hostile to the interests of religious truth. 

I. I shall not repeat what was urged before, of the 
intrinsic impossibility of establishing such an infallible 
authority by any course of argument. # The difficulty of 
such a task must be very evident. A series of more 
than sixty books, comprising historical records, letters, 
proverbs, poems, addresses, prayers, in every style, and 
on all variety of topics, appearing at uncertain intervals 
through a period of a thousand years, and covering the 
history of near forty centuries, gathered in their present 
form by the unratified choice of men or the decision of 
unauthenticated tribunals, gives us no handle by which 
we can even begin to deal with the plain question of its 
inspired authority. It is hard to see how any one, aware 
of the history and uncertainty of our present canon, can 
venture to put all the books in a single category, or 
so much as approach the postulate of its inspiration with 
any hope of sustaining it. But let that pass. Taking 
the Scripture canon as it stands, waiving preliminary 
questions, and meeting the advocates of the theory on 
their own ground, what evidence can they rely on ? 

The testimony of Scripture itself ought not, in strict- 
ness of argument, to be received on this point ; certainly 
not as covering the whole ground. Of course no book 
can assert its own paramount authority, until its credi- 
bility in all respects has been established ; because, to 
sustain this-assertion, it must appeal (if disputed) to testi- 

* Page 30. 



SCRIFTURE INFALLIBILITY. 169 

mony. If it quotes itself, that is only saying the same 
thing in other words ; this new assertion must be proved. 
If it quotes other testimony, it yields the paramount au- 
thority in the very act of defending it, — submitting it to 
be decided on by external proof, and so making that su- 
perior. This is the same fallacy as that committed by 
Roman Catholic writers, in endeavouring to vindicate by 
reasoning the authority of their Church as paramount 
over reason itself. 

But granting the entire trustworthiness of Scripture 
for all its deliberate assertions as to matters of doctrine, 
what claim does it make to the inspiration ascribed to 
it ? Setting aside those passages referred to in the usual 
arguments on this subject, which simply speak of the 
special authority of Christ or his messengers to commu- 
nicate instruction, those which refer to the belief of the 
Jews in their records, those which speak of the indwell- 
ing spirit of God in good men generally, — all which are 
points admitted on both sides, — together with some which 
only by the most arbitrary construction can be made to 
hint at any thing like. this doctrine, I find but a single one 
on which a plausible argument can be sustained. It is 
the passage (2 Tim. iii. 16) rendered, " All Scripture 
[is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for 
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness." Now the verb u is " is inserted both 
times by the translator, there being no verb at all in the 
Greek ; and the word " and " is doubtful, so that we 
may leave it out, or translate it u also " if we choose, 
for it often has this meaning ; and then our rendering 
may be, if we will, " x\ll Scripture (or writing) divinely 
inspired is profitable (or is also profitable) for doctrine," 
&c. This is the rendering of several eminent critics ; 
15 



170 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

and the statement, thus interpreted, will be, that the 
Scripture was not only Timothy's guide and instructor in 
youth, but would be his most effectual help in his pub- 
lic teaching. Then the word " Scriptures " may refer 
either to the whole Jewish Scriptures (before alluded to), 
or to the inspired part of them, or to spiritual writings 
generally, which are desirable, whatever their source, 
as aids to a religious teacher in his work. It certainly 
does not refer to the writings of the Old and New Tes- 
tament as a whole, which is the only point that affects 
the present argument. And the word rendered " given 
by inspiration of God " (literally u God-breathed ") is 
so loose and vague in its meaning, that it may refer to 
any sort or degree of Divine influence exerted on men's 
minds, — to the inspiration of poetry, of eloquence, of 
enthusiasm, of piety, or any thing which is acknowl- 
edged as the direct action of God's indwelling spirit 
upon the human mind. And this word gives the only 
direct argument to sustain the Orthodox dogma of 
Plenary Inspiration. 

So far, then, as it depends on positive and extrinsic 
evidence, the argument for the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures appears to be wholly untenable. The circumstan- 
ces sometimes appealed to as internal evidence to bear 
it out — such as the momentous nature of the truth con- 
tained, the spiritual depth or magnificence in style of 
many passages, the lofty strain of morality on the whole 
inculcated — are all such as we may and do most cheer- 
fully admit ; but by no means affect the cogency of the 
argument. Admitting the trustworthiness of the books 
throughout," there is still wanted their own explicit asser- 
tion, to establish their peculiar inspiration of form and 
substance ; and even this we find it impossible to make 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 171 

out. So that neither positively, nor by implication, can 
we obtain any sure support for the doctrine in question ; 
while the multitude of well-known inconsistencies, some 
trifling, others grave and important, are each enough for 
its complete and total overthrow. 

II. To some it may appear as if the loss of this doc- 
trine of verbal inspiration would make all religious truth 
doubtful, — as if a great support were taken away from 
the faith of men. So it may possibly be in a few cases ; 
just as the proof that the earth turns round has no doubt 
unsettled the old habitual faith of many minds, and as 
the trust of many more in a special Providence is over- 
whelmed by what science tells of the infinite multitude 
of the stars and their stupendous magnitude. But at 
worst, the loss in this regard is not so great as may at 
first appear. For, as I am now to illustrate, the Bible 
has not been the source of certainty and uniformity of 
belief, even among those who have held most strenuous- 
ly to its infallibility. Indeed, with the history of the 
Protestant sects before us, almost all setting out with 
the same principle of the absolute authority of the 
Scriptures, and differing heaven-wide in their conclu- 
sions on every single point of dogmatic opinion, it might 
seem gratuitous to say any thing on this topic at all, or 
do more than point significantly at these diversities. My 
neighbour finds there the Trinity and Atonement, which 
I do not. One discovers the doctrine of an eternal hell, 
another the absolute equality and immunity of all men in 
the future life. And so on, through the whole catalogue. 
I cannot account for these diversities, but only state 
them. It is not going too far to say, that the language 
of the Bible, at least some part of it, can be interpreted 
to conform to any, the most extravagant, opinion that 
ever was or ever can be entertained. 



172 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

Now all this would be comparatively harmless, unless 
for the previous opinion that every thing must be true 
which can be found in the Bible. It is this idea which 
gives such bigotry and pertinacity to those who advo- 
cate the opposite opinions ; which makes them relent- 
lessly hostile to those who deny their favorite point of 
faith. Difference of interpretation is to them treachery 
to the record. To overlook the point they insist on is 
defiance of God. The history of fanaticism and secta- 
rian bigotry of all sorts is a practical demonstration of 
what might seem clear enough without it, — that, be the 
Bible as infallible as you will, it does not answer its 
end as a safe and unerring guide into one uniform, har- 
monious system of religious truth. 

And this practical insufficiency of the Bible to meet 
the end proposed is further shown in the little reliance 
the advocates of Orthodoxy actually place upon it. 
They do not trust the Bible to go alone. Theoretically, 
their point of radical hostility to the Roman Church is 
that this Church does not put the Scripture into the 
people's hand without the priest's interpretation. But 
in point of fact, they follow the same course, a little 
modified. Their religious instruction begins with a cat- 
echism, and is summed up in a creed. Each, of course, 
purports to be a selection and expansion of what is ver- 
itably in the Bible ; but the only catechism and creed I 
ever heard of, in the very words of Scripture, were 
those in some Unitarian churches. And the only ex- 
plicit Orthodox creeds I am acquainted with certainly 
make very little account indeed of Scripture words. 
The standard commentary makes a work near twelve 
times the size of the Bible itself. I do not say that 
these are knowingly and wilfully perversions of, or sub- 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 173 

stitutes for, the doctrines found in the Bible ; but cer- 
tainly they are very curious illustrations of the maxim, 
so often quoted from Chillingworth, that ,c the Bible and 
the Bible only is the religion of Protestants." Instead 
of u the Bible," you have the artificial and compact 
statement of a creed ; instead of " the Bible only," 
an enormous commentary expanded to many times its 
volume. Not that the Scriptures are not circulated too ; 
this they are, assiduously, indefatigably, conscientiously. 
But with the continual accompaniment of exposition, 
the painful and elaborate proof of doctrine, the fore- 
stalling of each person's judgment, so far as may be, by 
previously formed opinion, we see how little " the suf- 
ficiency of the Scriptures and the right of private judg- 
ment " are practically relied on, even by those whose 
creed should make it impious thus to step (as it were) 
between the inquiring mind and the Deity, who is mak- 
ing to it his solemn personal communication. 

Thus the two tests which we have the clearest right 
to apply — uniformity of opinion and habitual practical 
reliance on the written word — are found to fail utterly, 
when applied to men's profession of belief in Scripture 
inspiration. A third point is still more striking, though 
it is one which not only the advocates of this theory, 
but many others, w T ould probably be reluctant to admit. 
It is, that, not only in the adoption of theological opinion, 
but in their practical vieivs of duty, they judge the 
Scriptures by their own reason, instead of submitting it 
to be judged by them. A difficult and constrained in- 
terpretation is put arbitrarily upon many passages, to 
square them with the received standard of right and 
wrong. Some parts, of an ascetic and severe morality, 
are explained away. Such doctrines as non-resistance, 
15* 



174 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

passive obedience to rulers, the wrongfulness of prop- 
erty, the superior merit of celibacy, and the commu- 
nity of goods,* are set aside, though quite as literally 
and expressly taught as any theological dogma, because 
it is assumed beforehand that to believe them is fanat- 
ical. And the unqualified declaration of the perfect 
moral system taught throughout the Scripture, and so 
getting an express Divine sanction from it, practically 
amounts to this : that the good parts of the moral doc- 
trine of the Bible are regarded as inspired, — that is, 
what conscience and reason, our ultimate authority, pro- 
nounce to be good, — while the imperfect parts are kept 
back as far as possible, and studiously overlooked. 

There is no such thing as honest men, of sound mind, 
submitting their honest sense of right and wrong to the 
requirements of a book. It would be a great calamity 
if it were so ; but it is a calamity that can never happen 
to any large extent. No doubt men's reverence for 
Scripture falls in with and enhances their reverence for 
the right, — nay, even evokes that slumbering reverence 
sometimes, and makes them conscientious men. But 
when the two exist together and come in collision, as 
they often do, it is Scripture that always yields. It is 
pliable as wax in the hands either of earnest conviction 
or of obstinate prejudice. Thus, if there is any one 
thing expressly forbidden in terms by the higher morality 
of Scripture, it certainly seems to be the act of fighting. 
Yet when the occasion came, the written law has always 
yielded before the dictate of common sense, or the sup- 
posed necessity of the case. Every church has conse- 
crated the banner of fighting men, and sent chaplains to 

* Matt. v. 39; 1 Pet. ii. 13; Matt. vi. 19; 1 Cor. vii. 7, 8; x. 24. 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 175 

the battle-field. And the solitary exceptions to this in 
appearance are not so in fact. They are cases where 
the personal conviction, secret or avowed, has tallied 
with the sense of Scripture, and has brought men to re- 
nounce the profession of arms, and undergo pain, ridi- 
cule, or death, rather than raise a hand in self-defence. 
I do not say the Bible has not done much — doubtless 
more than all other books put together — to educate the 
general sense of right and wrong. But I do say, that 
where that sense has come in collision with the letter of 
its precepts, even among those most sincere and earnest 
in professing to believe its Divine authority in every 
word, it has been the Bible that was compelled to yield. 
Where it has dictated to blind, unreasoning obedience, 
there has resulted only extravagance and harm. 

III. It seems to be clearly established, from what has 
gone before, both that there is no evidence to sustain the 
complete and infallible inspiration of the Scriptures, and 
that, even if there were, they do not serve the purpose 
of a uniform and trustworthy guide, whether to belief or 
duty. But if these were all, I should not feel called on 
to express so emphatically my dissent from it. If the 
doctrine were simply harmless, it might be better to let 
it alone, nor disturb its easy resting-place in so many 
minds. But no opinion can be harmless, which misstates 
and overlays the true foundation of our faith. There 
are evils and dangers associated with this opinion, always 
more or less apparent, and sometimes pressing. To 
these I briefly alluded in the beginning of my remarks ; 
and I would now illustrate them more fully, — showing, in 
other w T ords, that u it is hurtful to the religious character, 
and hostile to the interests of religious truth." 

The first obvious mischief in the claim of any writing 



176 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

to strict infallibility is, that it cramps the action of the 
mind, discourages free criticism and inquiry, by which 
alone truth can be independently established, and so gen- 
erates a narrow and jealous dogmatism. Especially is 
this the case with writings like these, so diversified in in- 
tention, so various in style, representing ideas so wholly 
different as they must be, if only from their variety of 
age. This objection, it is evident, does not apply to 
the circumstance of having some one point or order of 
truths declared authoritatively, and put beyond the reach 
of question or denial. Such truths are the Being and 
Providence of God, the Immortality of the soul, the re- 
ality of Judgment, — truths which some accept on the 
express word of an inspired messenger, others as being 
essentially involved in the constitution of our soul. Prin- 
ciples of belief such as these, primordial truths, simple 
and grand, do not of course stand in the way of the 
mind's progress, or any amount of spiritual liberty, and 
may even be held essential to any high degree of either. 
But the miscellaneous declarations of a multitude of 
books, like those included in our Bible, cannot be taken, 
as a whole, as ultimate and indisputable facts, without the 
harm to which I have alluded. Men's minds will differ; 
and this difference will give occasion for endless reproach 
and bigotry. It would seem invidious to press the illus- 
trations of this, which must spontaneously occur to every 
one. 

A still greater danger results when the mind begins to 
investigate, and comes, as it inevitably must, in collision 
with statements in these books. The old battle between 
science and revelation is renewed at every step, and is 
not over yet. Two or three centuries ago, men seriously 
argued that the earth could not be spherical, because the 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 177 

Bible spoke of its ends and corners. The wide-spread 
belief in the Jewish or Chaldee mythology of evil spirits 
is another example of a kindred sort. To some minds, 
the obscure hyperbole quoted from the unknown book of 
Jasher, — that, at the command of Joshua, the Hebrew 
chieftain, the sun and moon stood still in the vale of 
Ajalon, — outweighs the plainest evidence of astronomy 
as to the monstrous incredibility of such a statement ; and 
the war between the geologists and the interpreters of 
Genesis has within a few years broken out afresh. The 
collision is most unfortunate ; but we see plainly enough 
which side must be the sufferer. Natural science marches 
steadily on, regardless of the protest of commentators ; 
and the positions it occupies, one by one, are hopelessly 
impregnable. There is nothing for this to fear now, as 
in the days of Galileo ; the peril is all the other way. 
And that is a real peril. The old protest of the dogma- 
tists, " If one part is given up, how do you know that 
any of it is true ? " now comes back upon them with 
terrible force. Very many parts are proved to be unten- 
able, even by the showing of the book itself. They 
must be given up. The dogma that would maintain 
them once, being too weak for this, may yet have 
strength enough left to bring a doubt over the spiritual 
truth itself in many minds. I have heard of a sailor in a 
shipwreck, who lashed himself to the anchor, and was 
drowned. So with this dogma, which has possibly been 
the anchor of some men's faith, but is its destruction 
now. If the question comes, Do you stake your relig- 
ious hope on the authenticity of such a book, or the 
infallibility of such a statement? — it must be answered 
one way or another. Orthodoxy or natural science, one 
or the -other, must break down. Science can stand 



178 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

alone now ; and as to pure and spiritual Christianity, 
there is no fear for that. The only danger is from that 
system which has studiously wrapped up men's holiest 
hopes with dogmas that cannot be sustained. These 
dogmas must perish in their own time. Take Ortho- 
doxy at its word, and the faith and hope of humanity 
should be wrecked and perish with them ! 

I have no fear that the Christian faith will perish so 
easily as that ; but in the very steps by which, it would 
assert itself, it gives another evidence of the mischief 
suffered from that doctrine. To keep the unalterable 
words of Scripture, they must be harmonized with the 
changing belief; hence casuistry and subterfuge without 
end. A spiritual sense must be forced, to supersede the 
plain meaning of the words. Verbal subtilties, remote 
analogies, which the writers never dreamed of, must be 
devised, not to evolve the Bible sense, but to square it 
at any hazard with the sense of men. This sometimes 
degenerates into positive and pitiful dishonesty, playing 
fast and loose with the clear meaning of the books, as a 
dishonest counsel forces the letter of the law, to over- 
bear the clear proof of his client's guilt. Enormous 
erudition is brought in, to bear out and justify some petty 
point of Biblical interpretation ; and what w 7 as assumed 
as the unyielding mould to shape the material of men's 
belief becomes passive and inert, to take what shape 
and hue they will. And this casuistry of verbal criticism 
seems to be inseparable from the pertinacious adherence 
to forms of language, while allowing the smallest measure 
of free speculation or investigation to the mind. As was 
before shown* of moral precepts, so here of intellectual 
opinion, the profession of deference to the written word 
is contradicted at every step of its practical application. 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 179 

That the freest and boldest thinking should at times 
come round and coincide remarkably in earnest and 
religious minds with Bible passages, whose meaning was 
obscure till this side-light was thrown on it from personal 
experience, is a noble testimony to the good faith and 
spiritual depth of a large part of these remarkable writ- 
ings. The hymns of David and the Epistles of Paul 
answer back to the earnest thought of the simplest and 
the wisest. But this spontaneous and living testimony, 
while prevented on the one hand by a scornful spirit, 
that cavils at the Bible, is equally prevented on the 
other by the strict and literal adhesion to the form, 
which suppresses the free development of the mind that 
might come round to that coincidence. At least, its 
value as testimony is mainly gone. It must be free, or 
it will be worthless. What we would accept is " the 
New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit ; 
for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." 

And finally, not only have fanaticism and evil pas- 
sion of every sort found their pretext and coloring in 
portions of these ancient books ; not only has the whole 
history of intolerance, in its pitiful superstitions and 
bitter persecutions, shown the harm of taking the word, 
instead of the spirit, to judge opinion by ; not only have 
fierce controversies been waged on minute points of 
opinion, and the merciless abuses of religion under the 
rule of bigots found a justification in the Jewish his- 
tory, — as the Puritans slaughtered their foes by exam- 
ple of Samuel, who hewed Agag in pieces before the 
Lord, and as persecutors have always found the prece- 
dent they wanted in the dealings between the prophets 
and the idolaters ; but a worse evil remains behind, at 
least one more perilous at the present day. The im- 



180 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

perfect morality of an uncivilized age is allowed to dic- 
tate to the conscience educated under all the influences 
of Christianity. Special pleadings for special wrongs 
are founded on the unauthorized application of precepts, 
and the gratuitous assumption of moral infallibility. It is 
held that the practice of three thousand years ago gives 
a standard which one is excused for not endeavouring 
to surpass at the present day. The ritual observance of 
the Jewish Sabbath (for infringing which the stern camp 
discipline of Moses stoned a man to death) is made the 
rule for keeping the Christian festival of Sunday. All 
foundation of right is point-blank denied, except the 
edict given for the Hebrew national law. Arbitrary and 
capricious selection is inevitably made among the pre- 
cepts, while the right principle of selection is disre- 
garded. And the social evils, which to the Christian 
mind stand as signs of a rude and barbarous, or at least 
imperfect, state, — slavery, war, extreme inevitable pov- 
erty, and needless cruelties in the administration of jus- 
tice, — are seriously defended from Jewish precedents, 
and maintained to be, not only inseparable from the con- 
dition of human society, but sanctioned and consecrated 
by the express command of God. 

All other evils seem light in comparison with this, 
falsifying as it does the basis of morality, and deadening 
the conscience, which should be a constant and living 
force, to be the bondman of a creed. This is against its 
nature, which is to overcome all wrong, and carry on 
the work of Christianity in the soul and in the world. 
For this there must be intellectual and moral liberty. 
Things should be judged by their own merits, or ex- 
culpated by the necessities of the given case ; never 
defended or accused by the letter of some obsolete sane- 



SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 181 

tion or penal law, applying only to a remote and barbar- 
ous age. The judgment Jesus passed, in denouncing 
one by one several of the express provisions of the Old 
Testament, is no more than what every honest man must 
do, on peril of sacrificing his sincerity and tampering 
with his faith. And this is precisely what the doctrine 
of Scriptural infallibility renders impossible. It cannot 
stand, accordingly, with the highest and best type of 
practical Christianity. 

I have been forced to pass so rapidly over this state- 
ment of the harm wrought by this false doctrine, as I 
consider it, that I almost fear my real position may be 
misunderstood. Let me say, then, in conclusion, that it 
is only the false view of Scripture authority I contend 
against, not the true use and value of the sacred books. 
On the forced and groundless claim of literal infallibility, 
they are open to all the objections I have urged. But, 
whether we take them on their loftiest claim, as the 
record, in the main authentic, of God's revelation to 
mankind ; whether we consider their central point of dig- 
nity, in the narrative of our Saviour's life, and his apos- 
tles' exposition of his truth ; or whether we think only 
of their intrinsic interest as the religious autobiography 
of the human race, — the deposit of the history, the 
conflicts, the doubts, the prayers, and profoundest spir- 
itual experience of the most earnest men, — the suggester 
of duty, the quickener of conscience, the assurance of 
immortal faith to so many ; — in whatever way we view 
these writings, we cannot overlook, we cannot overstate, 
their worth to us. Misstate it we may, by insisting on 
the dogmatic assumption of their infallibility ; and how 
deep the wrong thus inflicted on them, I have feebly 
endeavoured to show. My language has not been 
16 



182 SCRIPTURE INFALLIBILITY. 

stronger than that of Paul, who says, " The letter kill- 
eth, while the spirit giveth life"; or than that of Jesus, 
who says, " Ye have made the commandment of God of 
none effect through your tradition." Nor does any in- 
jury to the words of Scripture seem to me so deep as 
that injury to the sense and spirit, which I have endeav- 
oured to illustrate in my examination of that whole 
scheme of theology, founded on a perversion of both 
words and spirit. But I have said enough, while we 
accept the Scripture as indeed the word of God, 
to show our reasons for refusing to accept it as liter- 
ally " THE WORDS OF GoD." 



DISCOURSE IX. 



HISTORY AND POSITION OF ORTHODOXY. 

IT WAS NEEDFUL FOR ME TO WRITE UNTO YOU, AND EXHORT YOU 
THAT YE SHOULD EARNESTLY CONTEND FOR THE FAITH WHICH 
WAS ONCE DELIVERED UNTO THE SAINTS. — Jude 3. 

Two portions of the plan I had in view are now com- 
pleted. Throughout the course of argument presented, 
I have endeavoured to do strict and even justice to 
the opinions under examination. Taking the term Or- 
thodoxy as signifying the prevalent system of modern 
Protestant theology, I have tried to characterize fairly 
its main features, to select the strong points rather than 
the weak ones, to take the most plausible statement 
which seems truly to represent the doctrine, and to 
waive the advantage of making the system as such re- 
sponsible for the inconsistencies and extravagance of its 
advocates. Whatever incongruity has been shown to 
exist in it is essential to the nature of the scheme itself, 
It is the course of thought as a whole that I have di- 
rected your attention to, and not the unskilful statement 
of its several parts. The essential idea, not its acci- 
dental developments and perhaps perversions, has made 
the ground of every thing I have said. The great merit 



184 HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 

of the system, let me repeat once more, is the merit of 
consistency. Its strength is as a work of logic. The 
fundamental principle involved in it may be true or false, 
— my aim has been to prove it false, — but whatever it 
is, the whole is honestly deduced from it, and the whole 
must be judged according to it. In this view, and in 
this only, I have considered the several points as they 
successively came up. And the result of our inquiry 
seems to be, that the evidence for that system of re- 
ligious belief depending on this principle is insufficient ; 
"while its character is such, that, except on the most 
irresistible and overwhelming proof, we shall be forced 
to reject it. 

In the review which has been presented, I have spo- 
ken generally in my own name only, and have said noth- 
ing as the representative of a sect. No others need be 
held responsible for statements to which they might only 
assent in part. So far as was possible, I have sought to 
present a perfectly fair and perfectly independent exam- 
ination of principles, not caring to gain assent to every 
statement, so much as wishing to set men thinking for 
themselves. For the present, this seems to be the best 
office of theological discussion. Let men think for 
themselves, sincerely and in earnest, and God's prov- 
idence in the realm of thought will bring about a better 
result than we could dictate or foresee. 

I come now to the third and final division of my 
course. Having hitherto been engaged in the discussion 
of fundamental principles, and their development in the 
series of doctrines making up the Orthodox system, I 
am now to show how it was that system came to be re- 
ceived, and oppose to it, more distinctly than has yet 
been done, the principles which have been all along im- 



HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 185 

plied. The history of Orthodox opinion, and an ex- 
hibition of the main features of Liberal Christianity, will 
form the topics of my two concluding lectures. Not 
that I can pretend to give a full and satisfactory account 
of either. Whole lives of historical investigation, and 
the treasures of amazing erudition, have been spent in 
the still unfinished w 7 ork of the first ; and the elements 
about us are far too incoherent and shapeless to let us 
state the last with any fulness. Still, to make a few 
points prominent may serve our purpose, by enabling us 
to see our object more distinctly and from a better point 
of view. 

The objection in principle and defect in proof as re- 
gards the doctrines we have been considering have been 
long and painfully felt by many, who at the same time 
were withheld, by a secret dread, from disowning the 
faith as they were taught it. Some, as is well known, 
have returned to the bosom of the Roman Church, to 
find that assurance which on Protestant principles they 
must have lost. Some have rejected the doctrines them- 
selves, and remained floating between a cold negative 
belief and the obscure rudiments of a more liberal faith, 
— unless the confirmed habit of skepticism should keep 
them from having any faith at all. And among those 
who adhere strictly to the system generally professed, it 
is not too much to say that the strongest argument with 
them is the prestige of a supposed antiquity. They re- 
ceive it, because to them it represents the faith of past 
generations ; because it is associated with the love, and 
hope, and trust of many who have lived and died pro- 
fessing it ; and because it is taken for granted to be the 
doctrine of the primitive Church of Christ. In main- 
taining this, they suppose themselves to be u contending 
16* 



186 HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 

for the faith once delivered to the saints." And it is 
the dim apprehension of cutting themselves off' from the 
Christian communion of the early time, and embarking 
at hazard in new heresies, alien to the early faith, which, 
more than any thing else, puts a check on the spontane- 
ous movement of their own independent thought. This is 
the prejudice which, so far as I may, I wish to remove, 
in the course of the present remarks. 

Each Christian church considers itself to have the 
original and essential Christian faith. To admit it to 
be otherwise would be, not only to plead guilty to the 
charge of heresy, but to discredit any particular propri- 
ety in its claim to the name of Christian. From Cath- 
olic to Quaker, each assumes itself to be the true 
Church, in all essentials, after the model of the first ; 
from high Trinitarian to Rationalist or Socinian, each 
ascribes to Jesus precisely the measure of dignity 
which, in his reading of the Gospel, he understands him 
to claim, and which therefore rightfully belongs to him. 
Each receives in his own way the account of that great- 
est historical event, — the introduction of Christianity 
to the world, — and therefore each has, or thinks he has, 
the word of Scripture on his side. No one party has a 
right to charge another with doing wilful dishonor to the 
Scriptures ; no one can make exclusive claim of rever- 
ence and fidelity to Christ. My whole course of argu- 
ment has gone to show how fully (as in all sincerity we 
think) the Christian records bear out our exposition of 
the faith. I need not press this matter further. Each, 
of course, assumes that the Testament, rightly inter- 
preted, is on his side. 

I have represented the Orthodox system hitherto as 



HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 187 

a complete and consummate whole, — as a consistent 
thing throughout, with its parts mutually dependent, and 
logically bound together. So it is, as wrought out grad- 
ually, and defended by the succession of able thinkers, 
who, since the Reformation especially, have labored in 
its behalf. But so it was not at first. Its symmetry 
and completeness did not come all at once. It is an 
artificial and complicated structure, forced into harmony 
with the Christian records, rather than naturally deduced 
from them. Though to the common eye it bears the 
mark of high antiquity, yet, in a wider, historical view, 
it is only one of the transient forms in which men have 
clothed the one indestructible element of religious truth. 
To account for its existence, though imperfectly, seems 
a necessary part of the task of its fair examination. I 
propose, therefore, to consider briefly the process by 
which it was developed, and its position now. My re- 
marks will relate, first, to the previously existing materi- 
als, or elements, out of which the system was construct- 
ed, together with the changes made from time to time in 
its essentia] character ; and finally, to those circumstan- 
ces in its actual position which indicate that it will be 
soon superseded and outgrown. 

I. I am very far from pretending to have enough of 
profound and accurate learning, even if this were the 
right time and place, to trace the rudiments of the doc- 
trinal scheme in question among the various religions and 
philosophical schools of antiquity. In the discussion 
of the Trinity and the Atonement, I briefly alluded 
to some of these sources, showing how the essential 
character of those doctrines has varied from time to 
time, — their mode of interpretation and their place in 
the system being modified by the turn of thought in sue- 



188 HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 

cessive centuries.* And as to the essential idea implied 
throughout the whole, which is, that a sacrifice or equiv- 
alent is required to satisfy Divine justice, and enable 
man to escape the doom of infinite and hopeless misery, 
I have not hesitated to call it both heathen. in its origin 
and unchristian in its spirit. It is rather a matter of 
curious erudition than of practical utility, to trace out 
the remote source of the stream. I trust enough has 
been said to show that the Scriptures are not that 
source : and, further than this, a very few words will 
suffice to the end I have in view. This is, to illus- 
trate how the fundamental ideas in old religions, pagan 
and Jewish, entered into the way of thinking among the 
early Christians, and affected the tone of their theology. 
Christianity itself I shall assume to be the simple, pure, 
religious faith taught by Christ ; implied in all his teach- 
ings, and in the belief of all religious men ; received 
whether on his express authority, or from sympathy with 
his spirit. For the present I shall content myself with 
this definition of it, my object being to show how foreign 
elements were superinduced upon that faith, till its prim- 
itive character was to a great degree obscured and 
changed. 

It would be a great mistake to suppose that there ever 
was a time of doctrinal unanimity among the disciples of 
Christ. The pleasant hypothesis of a primitive undi- 
vided church vanishes as soon as we come in sight of the 
period when it is supposed to have existed. That, at a 
particular point of time, " the multitude were of one 
heart and one mind," is a proof that one common senti- 
ment bound them very close together, and impelled them 

* Pages 56 and 93. 



HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 189 

to one earnest work ; but by no means shows that they 
were agreed even on any single recognized principle 
of belief and action, consciously accepted and deliber- 
ately professed. Not theory, but practice, not talk so 
much as work, made their proper province. The apos- 
tles themselves seem hardly to have had a glimpse of the 
spiritual design of Jesus till after his final departure ; and 
the first church action that was taken, the appointing of 
deacons, was in consequence of division and complaint. 
A few years after came the great controversy on cir- 
cumcision, or the ritual, to settle the point whether the 
Christian Church was to be a Jewish sect or an inde- 
pendent body. The apostles laid down no rules infal- 
libly, but debated, and reasoned, and differed, and acted 
independently, like other men. Paul " withstood Peter 
to the face, because he was to be blamed." The 
church at Corinth seems to have been split in four par- 
ties, that of Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ. Two 
thirds of the later Testament writings are made up of 
controversial discussion. James warns against over- 
statements of the spiritual- party ; Peter thinks that Paul 
has written u some things hard to be understood "; and 
Jude exhorts the brethren " to contend earnestly for the 
faith once delivered to the saints." Now, all these 
things prove conclusively that there never was a period 
of doctrinal unity and harmony among Christians. Such 
a primitive state is purely imaginary, — men's fond dream 
of what ought to be, not their sober knowledge of what 
is or ever w 7 as. And yet Christianity was a real and a 
vital thing, — of power to make all these different men 
live and act and hope and suffer and pray together, and 
call themselves by one common name. If it was not a 
doctrinal system, received alike by all, what was it ? It 



190 HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 

could have been only what I said before, — the simple, 
pure, religious faith, which men took at the w 7 ord and 
life of Christ. A dogmatic system of opinion it certainly 
was not. And the only common element we can detect 
among the various minds of the first disciples is the sim- 
ple spiritual truth, the religion of reverence, trust, and 
love, which we call pure Christianity, as distinct from 
that of sects and creeds. This is found in every sect, pre- 
supposed in every creed. It is the primitive, essential, 
permanent, indestructible element, through all diversities 
of belief, - — " the faith once delivered to the saints." 

The principles or universal truths which Jesus taught 
— the love and providence of God, the sacredness of 
human life, the standard of perfect purity, the retribu- 
tion of the world to come — cannot by any possibility 
be reduced to a dogmatic system, claiming to be infal- 
lible and complete, without violating their essential char- 
acter, and transcending the plain meaning of his words. 
Still, it is one of the necessities of the human mind to put 
its opinions in systematic form, — its religious opinions 
full as much as any ; and these will be earnestly adhered 
to, and vehemently defended, just in proportion as the 
faith they are connected with is held sacred and dear. 
We are not to wonder at the controversies of the early 
Church ; only to lament their extreme violence, and find 
out, if we may, the origin of opinions so radically vari- 
ous, so bitterly conflicting. In the stating of his belief, 
no one can tell how much is due to previous education 
and habits of thought, or how much is legitimately de- 
rived from any single principle. The early Christians 
were never able to analyze their own opinions accurately, 
and say just what was peculiarly Christian in them, and 
what was not. Latent beliefs and hopes, that had been 



HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 191 

kindled long before and smothered under superstition or 
abuse, would be revived ; all the better faculties of their 
nature, discouraged under the world's idolatry, or re- 
buked by its skeptic speculation, would be energized 
afresh. The Christian found himself a new man, shar- 
ing a new life of trust and love and hope. The fact of 
its being so he was well assured of ; the reason and 
essential character of it was not so easy a thing to tell. 
The early writers and teachers of the Church had been 
philosophers of some Greek or Eastern school, or Jews, 
bred in reverence to the law of Moses. Some adhered 
to the ritual declaration, that " without shedding of blood 
there is no remission," applying it to every form and 
degree of sin ; others labored to force a spiritual mean- 
ing upon every word of the Old Testament ; while 
others, again, rejected the w T hole Jewish dispensation, as 
the work of an inferior and even malignant divinity, and 
thought the enemies of Jehovah were the friends of the 
true and perfect God. Some had the Oriental notion 
of a radical hostility between matter and spirit ; and 
they held that Christ did not come at all in the flesh, or 
suffer in reality, but that a phantom or imaginary shape 
was fastened to the cross. This belief, it is said, pre- 
vails widely in Asia at the present day. Some had the 
Platonic or Pythagorean notion of the mystic properties 
of numbers, and the creative power of the Divine Idea 
or Word ; and Christian doctrine was speedily affected 
by their terminology. It was a wavering and uncertain 
line, at best, that separated the true Church from the 
heretical. The statement, that strict justice and love 
cannot subsist in the same being, was first made by Mar- 
cion, who applied it to his doctrine of law and grace : 
and he was bitterly denounced by the good Polycarp as 
11 the first-born of Satan." 



192 HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 

Then there existed a thousand forms of speculation, 
as wild and vague as any now. The old polytheism 
was breaking down under the attack of philosophical 
skepticism ; while spiritual or transcendental theories 
sprang up in Egypt and the East, to satisfy men's crav- 
ing for religious truth, and the wildest superstitions of 
magic, the craziest fanaticism, and blindest reverence 
towards miracle-mongers, spread over a large part of the 
Roman Empire. Apollonius of Tyana and Alexander 
of Abonoteichos were not far from contemporary with 
Christ. To fill the void left by the decay of ancient 
beliefs, there rushed in a mingled flood of every species 
of fanatic extravagance. From the cruel rites of magic 
to the lofty speculations of a proud Gnostic philosophy, 
every thing that appealed in any way to men's religious 
sense found a welcome somewhere. " Such," says 
Constant,* " was the condition of the human race. 
Skepticism boasted of delivering men from prejudice 
and error and fear ; and all errors and fears seemed let 
loose. Reason was proclaimed ; and the whole world 
was struck with madness. All systems were founded 
in calculation and addressed to interest, permitting pleas- 
ure and recommending repose ; and never were more 
shameful delusions, more unruly disturbances, more bit- 
ter pain : till the wretched race seemed desirous to per- 
ish, that it might escape from a world without a God." 

And while the spiritual hunger and emptiness of such 
an era formed part of the preparation in men's minds for 
the appearing of a pure, positive faith, like that of Christ, 
it cannot be disguised, that habits of thought so strange 
and various* made it utterly impossible to give a sound 

* Roman Polytheism. 



HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 193 

and simple exposition of that faith. It could not but be 
that controversies should exist as to every possible dog- 
matic statement that should be framed. And contro- 
versies accordingly there were. 

It was from the midst of that chaos of religious opin- 
ion, of which I have endeavoured to give some hint, that 
the positive doctrines of Christianity had to be developed, 
one by one. That this was no simple and easy matter, 
the incessant controversial labors of Paul are a sufficient 
evidence. Still more striking is the history of the estab- 
lishment of the doctrine of Christ's Divinity, two centu- 
ries and a half later. Of that great battle I cannot pre- 
tend to give even the briefest account. By the acknowl- 
edgment of candid historians, like Neander, no distinct 
doctrinal statements were insisted on in the earlier period 
of the Church, a simple general declaration of faith in 
Christ being held sufficient. % But when the period of 
the persecution was over, and a nominally Christian em- 
peror ruled the Roman world, the smothered struggle 
broke out in great bitterness. Arius and Athanasius 
were the heads of the two contending parties. The feud 
was long and bitter, lasting not less than half a century. 
First one side, and then the other, laid down the form of 
faith for the Christian world. Five times Athanasius was 
in exile, and for a large part of forty years in peril of 
death. He triumphed at last, as we know, and gave the 
tone to the general opinion of the Western Church ; while 
the Northern converted tribes continued for many cen- 
turies, as do some of the Oriental churches to this day, 
to hold opinions radically different on what is held to 
be the most vital point of all. 

The fact remains historically true and incontrovertible, 
that the cardinal doctrines of Orthodoxy were slowly 
17 



194 HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 

matured, one by one, established by uncertain and fluctu- 
ating majorities, in councils notorious for violence of party 
feeling, and maintained for a long time by the terror of the 
sword. I have illustrated this in only a single instance, 
— the doctrine of the Deity of Christ. The Trinity, as 
I before mentioned, did not appear in its final shape till 
later, at least, than the middle of the fifth century. The 
several successive forms assumed by the doctrine of the 
Atonement I have also exhibited before. Not less vio- 
lent was the controversy on other points. In 385, Pris- 
cillian was put to death in Spain for heresy on the 
subject of moral evil ; " the first instance of the judicial 
execution of a heretic," says Gieseler, " and universally 
condemned." And the more attentively we consider 
the history of religious opinion, the more clearly shall 
we see, both that the fundamental character of the pre- 
vailing theology has very widely varied from age to age, 
and that the form given to it at successive periods has 
had no weight of authority whatever that should over- 
rule the distinct and deliberate conviction of any well- 
informed and candid man. 

One further point deserves a moment's notice, — the 
sort of spiritual authority by which the received opinion 
for the time being has been enforced. That no ecclesi- 
astical power was vested in an organized body of men 
by any commission of Jesus, at least to endure for more 
than a single generation, seems as plain an inference as it 
is possible to draw from the general language of the Tes- 
tament. That it was not uniformly submitted to, at any 
rate, is proved by the divisions in the apostolic council, 
by Paul's opposition to Peter, before spoken of, and by 
his steady refusal to regard the apostles in any other 
light than as independent teachers of a common faith. 



HISTORY OF ORTHODOXY. 195 

But ecclesiastical power being once got, it was never 
difficult to find occasion for putting it forth. How here- 
sies were dealt with by the Roman Church, some cen- 
turies ago, we know from the history of the Inquisition, 
the Albigenses, the Knights Templars, the Council of 
Constance, and the wars of the Huguenots in France. 
If Protestant sects have had less power, they have often 
had no more scruple about using what power they had. 
From the precise and rigid dogmatism of Calvin, carried 
out to the burning of Servetus for heresy by the author- 
ities of Geneva, down to the shadowy remnant of eccle- 
siastical sway shown in excluding fellow T -believers from 
the communion-table for some trifling variation in their 
creed, the still existing forms of discipline and excom- 
munication, or simply withholding the Christian name 
when claimed by others as a privilege or a right, we 
still find relics and traces of the same domineering spirit, 
the same disposition to lord it over God's heritage and 
have dominion over others' faith, so nobly disclaimed by 
the Apostle Paul. The remnants of this exclusive and 
domineering temper, still existing in our churches, I 
have not thought it best to notice more at length, de- 
siring only to show how baseless is the assumption they 
are founded on, and how hostile to the mind of Christ 
the theory they are called in to support. Positive cru- 
elty and harsh injustice are often committed, even now, 
in the wielding of that frail and shadowy sceptre of spir- 
itual authority. But the sufferers by this now are indi- 
viduals, not whole classes, tribes, or nations, as in former 
times. Except in isolated cases, the pressure of church 
authority is not often very harshly felt, perhaps ; and the 
spirit of our time is most powerfully arrayed against it. 
But as part of the machinery which has always been 



196 POSITION OF ORTHODOXY. 

found necessary to brace these doctrines up against the 
assaults of reason »nd independent thought, we cannot 
but notice it thus passingly. It forms a very important, 
and indeed essential, feature in the history of Orthodox 
opinion. Why the authority has generally been exer- 
cised that way, it is perhaps not difficult to tell. But 
as its terrors disappear, we may at least rejoice that 
matters of opinion are likely to be judged more inde- 
pendently, and more truly by their merits. 

II. I have thus brought forward the points best worth 
noting in the historical aspect of the theory in review, 
namely, the previously existing elements which were 
blended with the primitive Christian faith ; next, the 
process by which, in the course of centuries, the sev- 
eral doctrines were brought to their present shape ; and, 
finally, the authority, or ecclesiastical power, which has 
always been brought in play to defend them against the 
invasions of free inquiry. The remaining point for con- 
sideration is the condition in which we find these doc- 
trines now, — the hold they have on the general mind 
at the present day, and the counter influences that are 
at work to weaken that hold. 

It is only with great distrust, and many qualifications, 
that w T e can speak of the actual position which any form 
of belief occupies at any given time. Long after the 
Greek mythology had lost credit with thinking men, and 
the inhabitants of cities generally, it lingered in the rural 
provinces ; and hence the name Pagan, which in its first 
use meant simply villager. At Athens, Paul found an 
altar u to the unknown God," and only Epicureans and 
Stoics to encounter ; while in a remote district of Asia 
Minor the people were ready to offer sacrifice to him as 
the god Mercury. Now it would be a gratuitous affront 



POSITION OF ORTHODOXY. 197 

to rank any form of Christian belief with the relics of that 
old mythology ; but the law of the mind observed in 
both cases is the same. Every doctrine, considered as 
the imperfect statement of a spiritual fact, must pass 
through three stages : being, first, the sincere and genu- 
ine expression of some point of personal conviction or 
experience, the growth directly of the active religious 
sentiment ; next, taught or transmitted in the form so 
given to it, without a doubt as to its truth, only less ear- 
nestly felt because taken at second hand ; and, finally, 
retained as a dead and empty form, after the spirit is 
departed, or the religious fact is no longer perceived 
in it, when it must be speedily supplanted by some other 
belief,^or disbelief. These three are blended and inter- 
mingled, so that they can never be accurately distin- 
guished and positively pronounced upon ; yet they indi- 
cate the process of mind which always ensues as to any 
practical and imperfect statement of religious truth. The 
truth to be expressed is in its nature infinite ; and the 
form of words is never broad enough to cover it com- 
pletely. 

It would not become me to pronounce with any pos- 
itiveness as to the degree of earnestness and sincerity 
with which the doctrines in question are adhered to. 
Certain it is, that their signification is very essentially 
modified from what it once was. No intelligent man 
would be willing, at the present day, to commit himself 
to the forms of statement which were once rigidly held 
to ; for instance, as to Election, Predestination, and Nat- 
ural Depravity. Language is often used with a secret 
reservation and qualification, — more to have a certain 
effect within the Church, than to state dogmatically the 
spiritual condition of those outside the Church. Denun- 
17* 



198 POSITION OF ORTHODOXY. 

ciation of heretical opinion may be made as positively as 
ever ; but in the thousand social and Christian courtesies 
that are daily passing, the u middle walls of partition " 
between the various sects are imperceptibly undermined. 
More and more is necessarily made of the great spiritual 
principles that underlie the religious character, less and 
less of the form in which they may be professed. What- 
ever may be the declarations of men's creed, I never can 
believe that, when the case occurs, the previously formed 
opinion does not melt down before the exhibition of pure, 
practical Christianity, anywhere. In earnest, positive 
statements of the conditions of the religious life, men fall 
back more and more on what is simple and universal ; 
and' their notion of what Christianity is corresponds 
more nearly w 7 ith their ideal of a devout and holy life. 
And this process, continually going on, and usurping by 
degrees the place of the dogmatism that was once so 
much dwelt on, is an almost certain pledge, that, what- 
ever opinions be personally held and cherished, the es- 
sentials of the Christian life will be regarded more and 
more as the simple first principles of piety and love. 
Dogmatic Christianity must be superseded by the prac- 
tical, or the danger is that both will decay together. 

Another thing that should be noticed is, that critical 
investigation and discussion are doing very much to 
weaken the hold on multitudes of opinions formerly held 
without doubt or scruple. The sublimation of Ortho- 
doxy into metaphysics, and the bold speculation that 
has taken the place of implicit trust in the Scriptures, 
are well-known features of the theology of the present 
day. Both -are unavoidable incidents in the career of 
the active mind. Besides, the proof relied on to sustain 
these doctrines is of a sort which has very much lost 



POSITION OF ORTHODOXY. 19D 

credit in modern times. Textual interpretation and ec- 
clesiastical authority, practical and cogent arguments 
once, pass for little now to the independent seeker after 
truth. Natural science and historical criticism have in- 
troduced a whole new order of investigation ; and what 
would once be received with easy and credulous assent 
has now to abide a far severer scrutiny. 

The inevitable consequence of this is, that what does 
not harmonize with the analogies of nature and the re- 
ceived dictates of other branches of knowledge main- 
tains at best a hazardous and uncertain place in the 
world's esteem. Either it claims a province of its own 
(which may be conceded to it by courtesy), and as- 
pires to nothing more than to rule the way of thinking 
of the credulous few ; or else, maintaining its relation to 
the great world of human thought and progress, it is 
forced to make concessions to men's common sense, to 
keep in reserve its more prominent and characteristic 
features, and to appear simply as the champion of re- 
ligious faith and good morals. It waives its distinctive 
character as Orthodoxy ; it forgets the ancient lofty 
claim of theology as queen of the sciences, and occu- 
pies precisely the same ground, to all practical purpose, 
with that very style of heresy which from a dogmatic 
point of view it persists in denouncing. The position 
of practical religion and morality is one and the same 
everywhere. And the virtual disavowal of an exclusive 
sanctity and authority, and the habit which more and 
more prevails of pleading in behalf of religion generally, 
rather than any special form of it, are worth noting, as 
one sign of the position occupied by Orthodoxy proper 
at the present day. 

Still more striking is the illustration of this point 



200 POSITION OF ORTHODOXY. 

which we find in the case of earnest and thoughtful men, 
of every religious body. They come more and more 
to occupy a common ground. The effort to spiritualize 
the ancient dogma brings its meaning round to coincide 
with that of the modern speculation. After all, men's 
understanding of the dogma is only the requirement of 
one or another school of metaphysics. The creed may 
remain the same ; but read in the light of old English 
philosophy it is one thing, in that of new German 
philosophy it is quite another thing. Perhaps Cole- 
ridge is doing more to revolutionize and liberalize the 
prevalent theology, than all the so-called liberal writers 
put together. Substitute his style of thinking for the 
old Calvinistic metaphysics, and we care not much how 
tenaciously you retain the forms of speech. The essen- 
tial value of doctrine, after all, will be as a true and pro- 
found exposition of human experience ; and just in pro- 
portion to men's sincerity and depth will this be found 
to be substantially the same, from whatever school of 
theology it may proceed. The broad features of the 
religious life, underlying every form of speculation or 
dogma, are the same in all ; and as our interpretation of 
these is rich and full, shall we attain completeness in our 
theology. And this is a way of viewing the subject 
which is inevitably coming to take the place of the old 
style of dogmatizing. Let it once be clearly appre- 
hended and consistently followed out, and we shall no 
longer be troubled with the vexing and relentless war- 
fare of contending sects and creeds, no longer distressed 
with dogmatic declarations of God's wrath upon heretics 
and unbelievers. 

And once more, zeal for the doctrine of an exclusive 
church is coming to be superseded by a new-born zeal 



POSITION OF ORTHODOXY. 201 

for other things. Points of public practical morality, 
positive and ostensible matters of humanity and reform, 
have more weight than church authority with the mass 
of conscientious men. From its peculiar position in the 
world of thought, Orthodoxy has been compelled to 
spend an undue portion of its energies in the work of 
self-defence. Hence, danger of hesitation about apply- 
ing principles of Christian righteousness to existing facts ; 
and then, of mutilating the principles themselves. Re- 
ligious bodies have always been charged with timidity 
and backwardness as to great points of public morals. 
If they can answer the charge by saying their office is 
to develop individual conscience and moral force, it is 
a good and sufficient answer. But this cannot be the 
case, while the province of religion is placed chiefly in 
w T hat priesthoods have always claimed control of, name- 
ly, religious emotion or ceremony and the future life. 
Religious principle and the present life are legitimate 
portions of that field. And so loud is the demand for 
the application of religion here, that a church refusing 
to hear that call must lose ground relatively, in the ad- 
vance of a moving age. Theological opinion is remote 
and ineffectual just so far as it ceases to be a sincere 
exposition of the facts of life, and throws itself back 
on the realm of obsolete ideas. It cannot bear against 
the pressure of the world's advance. If it resists, that 
pressure will be inevitably and most severely felt. 

It might seem, from what has now been said, as if the 
course of things spontaneously were enough, and it were 
labor lost to urge on a movement that is already rapid 
enough to be safe. Why hasten a dissolution which w T e 
declare to be inevitable and sure ? Why trouble men's 



202 POSITION OF ORTHODOXY. 

belief, which is to perish so soon without our aid ? - Let 
me answer this question briefly, in conclusion. 

The process is not a spontaneous one, and will not 
regulate itself. The actual harm done in our view by 
the maintaining of doctrines virtually outgrown and ob- 
solete, I have insisted on before. Their mischief as a 
vis inertia in the way of intellectual and moral force 
I have just alluded to, as well as the waste of strength 
and zeal spent in sustaining them. These alone would 
be reason enough for distinctly and positively opposing 
them. Controversy is neither useful nor pleasant for its 
own sake ; but it is the appointed and necessary means 
of something better than itself. Truth and error must 
be matched and confronted, — set fairly face to face, — 
or the high purpose and work of truth will be for ever 
unattained. Controversy, then, waged in a sincere and 
independent way, is not to be regretted, but welcomed 
a^ the pioneer of truth and righteousness. u Opinion 
in good men," says Milton, " is but knowledge in the 
making." So controversy in honest men is but pure 
Christianity in the learning. 

And finally, though the result may seem sure enough, 
— the destruction of certain forms of error, — yet it is 
of infinite consequence what shall come to take their 
place. The theory of Christianity which we have been 
examining, I think, is certainly destined to a speedy 
fall. It seems not to have an independent, vigorous 
life, but rather to be sustained by habit and the dead 
weight of inert resistance to the assaults of reason. 
But it has filled a place in the conscience and affec- 
tion of men,*which must not be left empty. That this 
should perish, and no substitute be found, would be a 
far greater calamity than that it should exist perpetually. 



POSITION OF ORTHODOXY. 203 

The question before us is, Shall it be supplanted by a 
cold negation, or outgrown by a positive, free, and gen- 
erous faith ? It is far easier to pull down than to build 
up. There may be a time for both ; but the time for 
this last should begin as soon and last as long as pos- 
sible. To deny is far easier than to affirm, and to some 
is quite as satisfactory. But there are moral and spirit- 
ual wants that must be met. The heart of mankind 
will for ever hunger and thirst after righteousness, and it 
must be filled. With an earnest, and reverent, and re- 
ligious mind, with a willingness to undertake the hard 
task of unfolding a higher and better system of truth, 
with a deep consciousness of those religious wants that 
must be met by a living Christianity, should we lay our 
hand to this preparatory work of invading the present 
belief of men. We should not wait for it to be under- 
mined by insidious skepticism, or superseded by barren 
unbelief. Strongly convinced of the reality of a faith 
more broad, lofty, and inspiring, and under the impulse 
of such a faith, should we approach this preliminary 
work, as a high duty we owe to God and man. We 
have no right to take it up in a different spirit, or from 
any other point of view. Whether or not w T e succeed 
in making a satisfactory and faultless statement, the at- 
tempt is one which we cannot honestly forego, — to an- 
ticipate so far as we may the invasions of religious in- 
difference and unbelief ; to plead in behalf of what to 
us is a purer and a better doctrine ; and, while con- 
tending against all forms of error, to contend more ear- 
nestly for " the faith which w^as once delivered unto the 
saints." 



DISCOURSE X. 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

WE HAVING THE SAME SPIRIT OF FAITH, ACCORDING AS IT IS 
WRITTEN, I BELIEVED, AND THEREFORE HAVE I SPOKEN ; WE 
ALSO BELIEVE, AND THEREFORE SPEAK. — 2 Cor. iv. 13. 

It is a charge which has often been made upon Uni- 
tarians, and with some show of justice, that, while they 
do their best to weaken men's belief in doctrines gener- 
ally received, they are not equally earnest, certainly not 
equally successful, in devising something better to take 
their place. Their system is said to be one of nega- 
tions ; their doctrine to consist in a denial of others' 
doctrine ; their Christianity to be the remnant, after re- 
moving all mystery and solemnity from the venerable 
belief of the past. Theologically speaking, it has been 
too often so. The task is certainly more obvious, per- 
haps easier, to contend against a given form of error, 
than to develop consistently the opposing truth ; and it is 
not to be wondered at if, to some persons, they seemed 
to have nothing to offer but a cc statement of reasons 
for not believing " the received dogmas of Orthodoxy. 
But a glance will show that this charge rests on mere 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 205 

ignorant prejudice. If Orthodoxy means the view of 
Christianity which involves the Trinity and the Vicarious 
Atonement, Unitarianism is the view of Christianity which 
does not involve these doctrines. # So far the statement 
is doubtless negative. But, for all that appears, one view 
may be as lofty, positive, and broad as the other. Nay, 
the doctrine which is denied may be an encumbrance, a 
limit, a perversion or enfeebling, of the truth ; and then 
what is denial in form is affirmation in fact. It is only to 
say with Paul, " The word of God is not bound." And 
such, in truth and honesty, I consider the case to be. 
Setting aside, then, this common prejudice, let us look 
on one side and on % the other, and judge them by their 
merits. 

The several doctrines of Orthodoxy I have regarded 
as false and injurious interpretations of certain points in 
the religious feeling and experience. I have represented 
them as opposed to and standing in the way of the prin- 
ciples of pure and simple Christianity. What those 
principles are I have only intimated, not distinctly laid 
down. I have taken them for granted, rather than given 
them a formal and systematic exposition. I have as- 
sumed the existence of a counter system of religious 
truth, furnishing the standard which the doctrines under 
review have been matched against and judged by. I 
come now to state more distinctly what that system is ; 
or rather, what the essential principles are that give it its 
distinctive character. That it is identical with the sys- 
tem taught by Christ, I have rather assumed than pos- 
itively asserted or maintained by argument. To do 
away in part the feeling that it is a vague and negative 

* See Prospective Review, Vol. II. p. 535. 

18 



206 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

thing, and to remove misconceptions as to my own 
meaning and position, I ask your attention to the state- 
ment I have now to make. 

What I mean by the phrase " Liberal Christianity" 
is by no means the same thing with the system professed 
by any church or sect, or received as the acknowledged 
basis of any denominational union. Statements of belief 
there may be, sufficiently full and accurate to define the 
position of an individual, positive enough to make the 
basis of outward union and cooperation ; but no one has 
a right to take his own, still less that of any body of 
men, as a sufficient exponent of what we mean by Lib- 
eral Christianity. It is rather a set of principles half 
consciously adopted by men in every sect ; the obscure 
basis of a common hope, zeal, and interest, among all 
who unite in the great Christian w 7 ork ; a common spirit, 
dwelling in many forms, found in many places, pervading 
and harmonizing many various beliefs. It is simply the 
element of religion and humanity, the essential meaning 
and motive in the words of Christ, the underlying prin- 
ciple in all sincere and earnest expositions of truth and 
duty, — only requiring to be more prominently brought 
forward and more clearly understood, as the sum and 
substance of Christianity itself. 

In the last Discourse, I alluded to some of the signs 
that earnest men in every sect are coming more and 
more to occupy this common ground of a spiritual faith, 
and to represent this, and not any form of dogmatic 
opinion, as the essential thing in religion. It would be 
doing great injustice to put forward the claim of any 
sect, as sucB, to a monopoly of it, or even to a para- 
mount place as its representative. If I have spoken 
occasionally as a Unitarian, it has not been to disparage 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 207 

the position of others in the movement which I wish to 
represent. Sincerely thinking, as I do, that the forms of 
opinion which as Unitarians we oppose are full of harm 
and error, I by no means consider that as Unitarians we 
have attained a sufficient knowledge of the truth. At 
most, we can only claim to be, with others, seekers after 
truth ; occupying in some respects a more favorable po- 
sition, at least, than we could occupy elsewhere, but wel- 
coming most gladly the fellowship and aid of fellow- 
seekers everywhere. I have endeavoured all along to 
show how liberal principles are at work in the bosom of 
every sect ; giving more and more the tone to their 
theology, and leading them to place more stress on the 
principles of the Christian life than on any theological 
creed. It is my object now to show more fully what 
these principles are, and what is the consummation they 
are leading to. 

What I speak of as Liberal Christianity is not the 
property of any man, or church, or sect, or creed. Any 
sectarian name would be far too narrow to express its 
meaning and purpose. In its essential character, some 
may be nearer to it, and some farther off; but in some 
degree, greater or less, it is represented in every sect 
and church. It is a method of understanding and apply- 
ing the truths of religion wholly different, and proceed- 
ing from a different set of principles, and presupposing 
a radically different view of the Divine government, from 
that which we have been considering heretofore. To 
that theory it is radically opposed, — uncompromisingly 
hostile. And yet I do not apprehend that any single 
feature in it, rightly stated, will excite alarm and distrust 
in a large class of those who advocate that theory ever 



208 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

so sincerely. The great difference is, that what to one 
is only the sentiment of the earnest and thoughtful, the 
desire and hope of the free-minded, an incident and ap- 
pendage to the positive declaration of the creed, rather 
acquiesced in (if thought of at all) than explicitly accept- 
ed and avowed, to the other is the main and essential 
element of Christianity itself. 

In other words, a spirit is abroad, turning the thought 
of the thoughtful and the hope of the earnest and sincere 
into a common channel, towards a common end. To 
take that up, to analyze and understand it, to make it 
the prominent and essential thing in our religious theory, 
to show its relations to the human mind and its applica- 
tion to human life, is to expound the system of what I 
call Liberal Christianity. When we speak of it, we are 
dealing with fundamental principles, not detailed opin- 
ions. It is to very little purpose to inquire, what do 
Unitarians believe, or what does any man believe. A 
person's private opinions are in some sense his private 
property ; and it is a barren and impotent curiosity which 
would pry into them merely for their own sake. We do 
not wish to dictate our opinions, or take them at any 
one's else dictation. So far as it seemed desirable, 
these have been stated or implied all along. But the 
principles according to which one believes and acts are 
almost sure to be worth knowing ; certainly, if he thinks 
for himself, and deeply. And these principles, as they 
apply to and are developed in the liberal faith, are what 
I would endeavour to set forth at the present time. I 
do not undertake to give you a Christian system, ready 
made to hand, — not even the outline of such a system ; 
but only to say what are the conditions on which it is to 
be had, if ever it is to be had, — the method we must 
follow if we would have any success in seeking it. 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 209 

I. In doing this, I must take for granted, first, the 
simple great verities of religion, without which it is not 
possible so much as to conceive of a system of religious 
belief at all. What I mean are such truths as these : 
the Being and Providence and Holy Attributes of God ; 
the Freedom and Accountability of the Human Soul ; 
the eternal distinction between Right and Wrong ; the 
Moral Discipline and Retribution of Life; and the 
crowning fact of Immortality, with whatever of moral 
or spiritual consequences it may involve. These we 
must accept beforehand, either as primary truths, ulti- 
mate and undeniable, — as much so as the fact of our 
own existence or that of the natural world, — or else on 
the strength of some authority that commends itself to 
our mind. 

For myself, I am free to say I think they are above 
and beyond the sanction of any outward authority, itself 
requiring to be established by outward proof; that the 
reason accepts and believes them, as soon as it is in a 
condition that makes it capable of doing so ; that they 
can only be illustrated and enforced, not their certainty 
confirmed, by the evidence of external facts ; and that 
the true and only mode of proving them is to educate 
the mind, morally and intellectually, up to that point 
where it perceives them to be necessary and eternal 
truths. Other evidence, historic or philosophical, may 
be of very great incidental service in that process of 
education, but cannot afford the ultimate and sufficient 
proof. In the last resort, our assurance is, that " God 
hath revealed them to us by his Spirit "; whether by di- 
rect and express communication, or in the fundamental 
laws of our intellectual constitution. We ought not, there- 
fore, to make them of a secondary grade of certainty ; 
18* 



210 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

or to allow, that, if the force of other evidence is weak- 
ened, they are rendered doubtful, and lose their weight 
and authority to our mind. 

Such an admission seems to me alike perilous and in- 
correct. Religious truth, in its intrinsic character, is 
most like the propositions of the pure mathematics ; 
which stand on their own foundation, and, as soon as 
properly stated and explained, are seen to express im- 
mutable and necessary facts. I may be unable just now 
to see the truth of or to understand an axiom in algebra, 
such as those involved in the differential calculus, or in 
mechanics, such as those respecting hydrostatic pres- 
sure and undulatory motion. But if so I know the 
fault is in me, not in the scientific proposition that makes 
it known to me. To a mind differently trained, it is 
simple and self-evident. In one sense I may be said to 
receive it on authority ; because I take it for granted, 
provisionally, in applying to practice the science which 
I hope one day to master theoretically. So, too, if I 
cannot just now see the truth of, or understand, the doc- 
trine of Providence or the Immortal Life, I impute it 
to a defect in my own mind, not to any lack of truth in 
the doctrine. I am willing, and I am compelled, to 
take it for granted before the proof. I know that it 
answers to the best feelings and aspirations of my na- 
ture ; that the native and spontaneous belief of mankind, 
however imperfect, always includes it ; that it has been 
an essential element in the most exalted minds, and the 
inspiration of all the noblest lives ; and I am sure that, 
as my experience widens and deepens, and my tone of 
thought is elevated, I shall become more capable of re- 
ceiving it. The universal mind of man, and the highest 
and purest individual minds, repose alike on this prim- 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 211 

itive conviction. Doubt is a transition state that often 
intervenes between the two ; while belief is the normal 
condition of the mind, as shown by all the tests which 
we have a right to apply. And this, it seems to me, is 
the only sort of authority, or method of proof, that can 
be safely employed in regard to the fundamental truths 
of religion. It is not outward, but inward ; not scien- 
tific or historic, but spiritual. 

But whether from inward persuasion or from outward 
evidence or authority we accept that order of truth, it is 
equally certain that it must be presupposed, as the foun- 
dation of any system of religious belief. And for our 
present purpose (which is to illustrate the principles of 
a Christian system), I presuppose the same as to the 
facts of historical Christianity, recorded in the New 
Testament. I do not enter for the present into any 
controversy as to their interpretation, or the precise na- 
ture of their authority ; but it is impossible not to per- 
ceive their immense value and importance in a religious 
point of view. Religion is wholly another thing to us 
from the existence of these writings, from the history 
indissolubly bound up with them, and from the rever- 
ence with which they are all but universally regarded. 
The character and tender providence of God are here 
revealed to us, as they are nowhere else so clearly, 
through the life and ministrations of Christ. We feebly 
acknowledge our debt to him, by naming our highest 
thought and purest morality after his name. Sharing in 
that mighty religious movement which began with him, 
we have no wish to disparage the paramount and pecu- 
liar claims of the Christian Gospels, however much we 
may seem to some lax in our criticism, or dangerous in 
our interpretation. We may receive them as explicit 



212 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

proof, or as the providential illustration of the religious 
truths spoken of before. We may take them word for 
word as the Evangelists have delivered them, or make 
qualifications, and abatements, according to our convic- 
tions as to the nature of historical evidence and the 
credibility of what is supernatural. All this does not 
affect our sincere veneration for these books, or their 
practical worth to us. Our faith in God and faith in 
Christ belong close together. We differ from others, 
not as to the reality, but as to the quality, of that faith. 
And going no farther than the plain, moral, and religious 
signification of the life of Christ, together with its ob- 
vious and incalculable influence on the life and thought 
of men, we find abundantly enough to command our 
reverence, and to serve as the basis and the key to our 
whole system of religious thought. 

Let us now briefly consider the important consequen- 
ces to life and character which result from accepting 
these simplest principles of faith, — these most general 
statements of spiritual truth. 

First, their value as religious truth, in the appropri- 
ate sphere of the religious emotion and experience. 
If they are held as theory or doctrine merely, they 
will be barren and worthless. I do not say one doc- 
trine is as good as another, till each is carried to its 
proper result in practice ; because we can never trace 
the secret operation of truth or falsehood upon the soul. 
But it is by no means to content ourselves with an accu- 
rate theory that we should seek and cherish truth. Its 
nature is too grave and earnest for such an intellectual 
play as that. "If right and genuine, its nature is to be a 
living and a working force. And for this and other 
reasons it is that I think we should not spend the en- 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 213 

ergy of our mind in seeking to establish, by laborious 
argument, those primary truths which must, after all, be 
taken for granted as paramount over any method or de- 
tail of proof, if we would make them of any worth to 
us. To speculate about them is the appropriate work 
of the mind, doubtless, in a certain stage of growth ; but 
the sooner it outgrows that stage by taking these things 
for granted, the better for its health and strength. They 
are valuable for their practical and essential use, — for 
that, in other words, which follows from the fact of 
their being religious truth. They brace and expand the 
mind. They lead to moral energy and earnest work. 
They calm men's apprehension of the future, and make 
them capable of gratitude for the past. They widen the 
circle of human companionship and love, uniting stran- 
gers in a common hope, and making the dearest fellow- 
ship of friends. They shed upon the ordinary places 
of human life a light from above, clear and celestial ; 
ennobling the lowest occupation, and leading the mind 
everywhere to repose in God. They are the solace of 
grief, the strength of the lonely, the security against 
temptation, the prevailing power over sin, the blessing 
and glory of the mind that puts trust in them. They 
bring together, in the compass of one magnificent and 
holy thought, the grandeur of the universe, the dignity 
of the soul, the sacredness of life, the glory of immor- 
tal hope, and the perpetual enfolding love of God. All 
this is but part of the native power and efficacy of that 
order of religious truth, when sincerely received, and 
made habitual to the mind. In strictness of speech its 
value is infinite, — not to be measured or defined by the 
standard of any thing alien from itself. In the language 
of the Proverbs, its price is above rubies, and all the 



214 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

precious things thou canst desire are not to be compared 
with it. 

And again, this spiritual faith has its meaning, which 
the intellect is to interpret and apprehend. Experi- 
ence and observation, refined and elaborated by patient 
thought, will bring us rich material, to be embodied in 
our faith and spiritualized by its contact. Honestly, 
clearly, and consistently, the mind must work upon the 
facts of our inward life, to see them in their right re- 
ligious meaning. And whatever interpretation we give 
to the origin of Christianity, whether we suppose, with 
some, that it was the descent of the living God in human 
form, or the word of a miraculously vouched and authen- 
ticated messenger, or simply the profound and intense 
conviction of the man Jesus himself, calling forth in re- 
sponse that wonderful tide of religious life and undoubt- 
ing faith that flowed deep and strong through the early 
ages of the Church, and so has come to us, — whatever 
origin we assign to the fact, the fact itself remains. 
Christianity has brought us objects of intellectual appre- 
hension and belief. It offers- us material of thought, 
rich without example. It reveals to us by its burning 
and shining light something in the depth of our soul of 
faculty, and capacity, and emotion, something of the 
broad compass of duty, something of the grandeur of 
moral heroism and the awful beauty of holiness, some- 
thing of the spiritual nature and destination of the soul, 
which without it, or something like it, we should 
have never dreamed. It does shed a ray, broad and 
clear, upon the path behind us of our past experience, 
and upon the <path before us of coming duty and coming 
pain. All this Christianity has done for us, interpret it 
how we can and will. So much it offers for food to the 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 215 

free and thinking mind. The gift should be improved, 
the talent employed. The very capacity of thought, 
to one who thinks, is reason enough why the thought 
should be trained and used. For " the light w T e have 
gained," says Milton, " was not given us to be ever 
staring on ; but by it to discover onward things more 
remote from our knowledge." 

We need have no jealousy of the free activity of hu- 
man thought. Christianity does not ask to live by suf- 
ferance. The free thought, like the willing conscience, 
is its natural ally. Human error, like human sinfulness, 
is the material God has commissioned it to work upon. 
So far from making Christianity succumb, or seek 
another province, or contend uselessly with the moving 
mind of man, we rather need an interpretation of it 
equal to the intellectual wants and advancement of an 
intellectual time. We need an idea of it equal to the 
highest thought and the intensest life of our own day. 
There are deep mental and moral wants, which it is 
called alike to meet. And as unquestionably the two 
intellectual characteristics of our age are freedom and 
science, — freedom in politics, society, and opinion, 
science embracing daily more and more of the bound- 
less range of the entire universe, — so we undoubtedly, 
if Christianity is still to be held and cherished, need 
a statement of it broad and generous and solemn and 
deep and liberal enough to command the respect and 
to w T in the love of this all-questioning and turbulent age. 

Again, the moral aim and purpose of Christianity. 
Its work is not only to expand the mind, and lead the 
heart to repose in God, but to quicken and elevate the 
sense of duty. Conscience, as it judges and acts on 
all things, must be disciplined and trained in faith. It 



216 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

will neither give nor accept a lower law than Christ's 
rule, Be ye perfect. This of itself opens an unmeas- 
ured field of moral growth and personal obligation. 
And as in the single heart of man, so in the wide world 
of man, the Christian thought of excellence must gain 
and grow. With even and inexorable tread that moral 
idea advances, heralding the moral action that shall 
surely come eventually to occupy its ground. We 
cannot escape, any more in the wider general relations 
we hold to other men and the world at large than in the 
conduct of our individual life, — we cannot escape the 
judgment of a conscience enlightened by the progress of 
Christian truth. The old coroner's verdict, u Death by 
the judgment of God," does not abide the investigation 
of modern physiology, which pries into the modes and 
operations of organic nature, and assumes the infringe- 
ment of some organic law. The ancient self-satisfied 
phraseology, famine, misery, oppression, crime, by the 
judgment of God, does not abide the stern scrutiny 
of Christian ethics, which investigates the operations of 
man's moral nature, and assumes the infringement of 
some organic social law. In awful, hollow tones, out 
of the wretchedness, starvation, and bloodshed that 
afflict a guilty world, does the word of Christian truth 
come sounding to our ears. In former times men forgot 
or heeded not its voice, so pleading. They cannot so 
forget or slight it any more. What has once come in 
living tones, and reached the public conscience, will 
echo there for ever. The ground which Christian fore- 
thought or benevolence has once come to occupy, it 
never surrenders. 

Terrible questions, as some may think, have been 
already put to the mind of our age. Yet no question, 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 217 

put in the frankness of Christian love, is half so terrible 
as the bald, unquestioned fact of public sin, — half so 
terrible as the blank and drear silence that formerly 
brooded over the desolation caused by human guilt in 
its giant dimensions, as it strode over and ravaged the 
bountiful, glad earth. All this effort, all this aim, rather 
than accomplishment, of the earnest Christian idea of 
our time, is but the inevitable result of the existence of 
Christianity in the world. It is but the mark of the irre- 
sistible advance of the tide of human thought. It is 
but the very prophetic words of Christ, of the Jewish 
prophet centuries before his day, struggling towards ful- 
filment. " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because 
he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; 
he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach 
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the 
blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised ; to preach 
the acceptable year of the Lord." God be thanked, 
that, in the inevitable march of human thought, guided 
and inspired by Christianity, some men have already 
come so far as to pray and strive and hope for a more 
literal fulfilment of his words than any but the sacred 
speaker himself dreamed of when he uttered them ! 

II. Having thus briefly and rapidly traced what to my 
mind is included in the system of Liberal Christianity, 
— namely, the primary religious truth, or foundation of 
faith in God and Christ, with its application to the 
spheres of religious experience, intellect, and personal as 
well as general morality, — I ask your attention while 
we look back for a moment upon the ground over which 
we have passed. 

It seems to me, that, frankly accepting the principles 
which have been laid dow r n, we stand in a position pecu- 
19 



218 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

liarly favorable to the fulfilment of the high purpose of 
such a faith. Theologically speaking, we have often 
been considered, and too often suffered ourselves to be 
regarded, as standing only in a negative position ; that is 
to say, we have been known only as denying, one after 
another, doctrines insisted on as absolutely essential, and 
by some held very sacred and dear, among other sects 
of Christians. The Trinity, so long the object and the 
symbol of the chiefest reverence paid to any thing, by 
the homage of the world, we begin by sweeping utterly 
away; so far as we are able, upturning every step of the 
foundation it was supposed to rest on ; taking our very 
name, some of us, from our unqualified denial of it. The 
Atonement, corner-stone of so many fabrics of faith, the 
strong and sure repose of many a devout heart, the key 
that seemed to unriddle the great mystery of man's life 
and God's government, — this, too, we assault, refuse, 
and do our best to overthrow. From the obscure yet 
venerated dogmas of Election, Free-grace, Predestina- 
tion, Regeneration, and Spiritual Influence, we strip the 
veil of mystery, seeking to reduce them, if possible, 
within the range of human philosophy and human sci- 
ence. We go still farther ; and, passing the awful shad- 
ows of the tomb, strive to dispel the vague terror that 
hung over the destiny of spirits departed, and to carry 
there the same law of moral and spiritual growth which 
we find prevailing here. 

With a bold and unsparing hand we have invaded the 
time-hallowed shrines of ancient faith. We have carried 
free religious inquiry to its last limits ; refusing to believe 
without a reason rendered why and how ; becoming 
Protestants of the Protestants, as Paul was at first an 
Hebrew of the Hebrews ; not stopping, some of us 5 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 219 

till, to the scared and amazed view of those who stood 
watching us, we seemed to have torn down the last bar- 
rier that old reverence had left standing, and to have 
compromised the very integrity of our faith in the provi- 
dence of God. The external coverings and supports 
by which that faith was once held in and sheltered have 
fallen, one by one, before the attack of men's restless in- 
tellect. Verbal Inspiration, and Prophecy, and Miracle 
have been successively abandoned by some minds, as- 
serting that they had no need of such defences and allies 
to their more refined and spiritual apprehension of truth. 
And no wonder, considering the disjointed and chaotic 
state of religious opinion everywhere, that the Roman 
Catholic begins to ask, What do you Protestants be- 
lieve ? and every sect asks in turn, What do you Uni- 
tarians believe ? 

In answer to this question, I say, without the smallest 
scruple or hesitation, that we have the materials for a 
system of religious faith beyond all comparison the most 
rich, complete, broad, lofty, and inspiring that the 
world has ever known. We do ourselves w T rong, we 
do wrong to the cause of truth and liberal thought, when 
we suffer it to be said that our creed is mainly negative, 
that our doctrines are made up of the denial of others' 
doctrines. It is not so. Our principles of belief, if we 
rightly understand them, are most positive and explicit. 
The whole world of language, the whole realm of human 
thought, would scarce suffice to comprehend our simplest 
propositions, together with the infinity of results, illus- 
trations, applications, hopes, and motives that belong to 
them. If we understand ourselves in our controversy 
with others' theology, we are only trying to remove the 
limitations and bounds that hamper, belittle, restrain, the 



220 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

free movement of our mind towards God. It is not that 
we refuse or deny the spiritual fact contained, for in- 
stance', in statements. of the Divinity of Christ, the great 
Redemption and Reconciliation of men's souls, the awful 
Discipline and Retribution that attend on human charac- 
ter ; but because we cannot consent to be limited and 
confined by the boundaries men have drawn about these 
sacred subjects, reducing them within grasp and com- 
pass of the subtile understanding, or making them conven- 
ient tools for religious machinery and spiritual despotism. 
We do not deny the interior fact, the sacred personal 
signification of religious truth, however much we may 
wish the mind emancipated from some of its present 
forms. 

A doctrinal reformation, or religious revolution, has 
been defined as the falling back upon the experience of 
the soul, and making the personal element the test and 
the prominent part in our religious theory. We must 
have faith in the operations of man's moral and religious 
nature. We must have that primary and essential faith 
in the human soul. As stated by Des Cartes, it made 
the starting-point of modern philosophy ; and in the last 
analysis it must form the resting-place of all our religious 
thought. Without it, we are all afloat and astray. With- 
out it, we cannot trust a single intellectual process, or 
moral conviction, or course of religious argument ; there 
is no reliance anywhere. Without it, all the institu- 
tions, and creeds, and dogmas, and disciplines, and the- 
ologies, and confessions of faith that can possibly be 
fabricated are but so much clumsy and frail machinery. 
We may contend, if we choose, like the Church of Rome 
(which does it consistently), that our hierarchy is Di- 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 221 

vinely appointed, and that a miraculous virtue resides 
in every hallowed rite, and symbolic act, and priestly 
word ; but on any other than this absolute and high- 
handed assumption, there is no ultimate reliance, save in 
the integrity of the soul of man, under the control of 
laws appointed in its constitution, and executed under the 
universal providence of God. 

There is absolutely no middle ground between these 
two. Either our church is a separate, Divinely estab- 
lished thing, and its simplest acts are miracles, and its 
simplest words are oracles or spells, and a bound utterly 
peculiar and not to be crossed sets it apart from every 
thing human and profane ; or else, whatever Divine ele- 
ments of truth be intermixed, the creed, the opinion, the 
form, the external rite or institution, is simply human, 
and depends, not on any special sanctity of its own, but 
on the integrity and good faith of the human hands that 
sustain it, the human minds that give credence to it, the 
human souls whose conscious w T ant it satisfies. 

Of these two extreme positions, we have chosen the 
latter for our own : not necessarily cutting ourselves off 
from the forms of faith or worship, or the particular 
opinions either, that belong to other times and churches ; 
but accepting what we do accept, and denying what we 
do deny, on grounds utterly different from those urged 
by church authority or priestly discipline. Our Chris- 
tianity we take because it comes home to our own expe- 
rience ; and w T e take it in such form as comes home to 
our own experience. It is the great field of man's spir- 
itual history and life from which we gather the materials 
to build the structure of our faith. Scripture may give 
the key, the life of Christ may give the pattern, his death 
may give the solemn motive, his promise may give the 
19* 



222 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

firm assurance, with which we look forward to eternity, 
and his resurrection, our confiding and triumphant hope. 
But all these do not give the lines and limits ; they do 
not mark the boundaries of the active intellect ; they do 
not show where the mind's range and expansiveness shall 
find a check. But rather they give strength and im- 
pulse to the free motion of the mind. They give en- 
couragement and vigor to 

" This intellectual being, 
These thoughts that wander through eternity." 

They arm us with new instruments, and put us on a new 
course, and give a new spirit to enlighten us, in our dis- 
covery of truth. So let us welcome the free and in- 
spiring, and not slavish, reliance upon the Oracles of 
Truth. 

The chief thing to be taken note of, especially in 
making application of the principles before asserted, is, 
that there are very various types of intellectual and re- 
ligious character. Each one has his own ; and it is by 
being strictly faithful to his own that each one is to find 
satisfaction. " There are diversities of gifts, but the 
same spirit ; and there are differences of administra- 
tions, but the same Lord ; and there are diversities of 
operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in 
all." We have no reason to be afraid of the largest 
liberty and the extremest diversity. The only real 
cause for fear is lest the efforts made to hamper this 
liberty, to render uniform this diversity, should result in 
distortion and disease of the religious sentiment, or else 
in giving rise to strange and fantastic forms of false, im- 
aginary independence. What are the nations where re- 
ligion seems to be at the lowest ebb ? Precisely the 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 223 

ones where enthusiasm heretofore has been most ram- 
pant, where discipline has been most intolerant, where 
priesthoods have exercised strictest sway over the op- 
erations of intellect and modes of worship, and where 
the strong hand of civil power has most relentlessly 
enforced decrees dictated by the strong will of hierarch- 
ical rule. 

We need no such ungenerous and cowardly methods 
to sustain our religious faith, no such controlling guid- 
ance in our search for Christian truth. First for the 
faith. It springs up, spontaneous and irrepressible, in 
the human soul. There never was a period, probably 
there never was a man, of tolerably free and healthy 
activity of intellect, that did not show too abundant 
signs of some type of religion. So God has consti- 
tuted our spiritual nature. The utmost that could pos- 
sibly be accomplished, in the most radical and sweeping 
revolution w T e can in any way conceive, would be a 
change analogous to that which geologists tell us has 
once and again and a hundred times laid waste the fair 
and teeming surface of the earth. The inexhaustible 
fertility of nature triumphs over the smouldering and 
shapeless chaos. New forms of bird and beast and 
creeping thing, new and statelier growth of forest and 
grove, new wealth and more abundant beauty, are 
the result that comes to pass in the bounteous provi- 
dence of God. And so in the processes of human 
thought. Far be it from any of us to desire a wild cru- 
sade against every form of opinion, — to cut loose from 
all the moorings and anchorage of the past, — to engage 
in fanatic devastation of all that men count holy. But 
as a point of religious faith we hold it sure, and the past 
history of man confirms in us the belief, that the destruc- 



224 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

tion of one mode or fabric of thought is but to prepare 
for another ; that nothing whatever can permanently 
derange or stop the progress appointed by God to the 
human mind ; that though the night of seeming unbelief 
be long and dark to us, yet in the eye of Him to whom 
'* a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, 
and as a watch in the night," the soul lives, the heart 
beats, the dawn of a brighter day is coming, humanity is 
preparing a richer and better offering to lay hereafter 
at the footstool of the Universal Father. 

When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on 
the earth ? Yes ! Faith is the imperishable, the ever- 
lasting possession of the human heart, — the Divinely 
established bond which unites man's highest thought, 
his truest freedom, his most exalted moral heroism, with 
that God whose fulness is the source of all. The forms 
of it may vary ; its essence remains the same. As it 
was in the beginning, when in the childhood of the hu- 
man race men looked out on the young earth teeming 
with beauty, and with awe-struck gaze beheld the naked 
heaven, u the inverted hand of God " above them, — as 
it was in times of fierce commotion and disaster, when the 
only solace was in the childlike confidence with which 
the martyr's pious heart could whisper " My Father ! " 
— as it was in the age of implicit and unquestioning ado- 
ration, when painting, and poetry, and loftiest cathedral 
pinnacle or vault, and the solemn strains of the chanted 
mass, were but the impassioned utterance of the upward- 
striving soul ; — so is it now, after so many a weary 
struggle after truth, after so many veils removed, one 
by one, from Nature's mysteries, — now, when so many 
forms, once hallowed, are looked on but as unmeaning 
shapes, husks with the kernel gone, — now, after so many 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 225 

a battle for the right, and the slow evolution of princi- 
ples of justice and abstract moral truth, taking now their 
stand as the criterion by which men's conduct and their 
institutions too must be judged, — now and for ever 
does man's religious faith remain the same. Years can- 
not wear it down. Revolutions of all things else can- 
not shake its unalterable consistency. That is the 
Christian faith above suspicion, reproach, or fear ; the 
league between man and God ; the fast possession of 
the life ; the choice treasure of immortality ! 

And lastly, the materials and illustrations by which 
we are to realize this faith. They are provided in rich 
abundance ; they lie strewn thick everywhere. What- 
ever God hath writ in the deep heaven above us, spark- 
ling in starry splendor, as its glittering constellations and 
dusky nebulae tell us of the enormous scale on which he 
hath lavished his skill and power ; whatever we see on 
the diversified and fertile surface of the earth, as its 
hill-sides teem with vegetation, and its forests wear their 
garb of varied green, and its flowers bloom in profuse, 
countless variety, and its mountain-ranges lift their eter- 
nal peaks into the dark sky, rosy with dawn or evening 
twilight, or flashing like a kindled altar at the approach 
of day ; whatever we hear in the perpetual melody of 
nature, in the wood-bird's song, or the roar of waterfall, 
or*whispering wind through forest aisles, or dash of riv- 
ulet, or ocean's stormy voice, or peal of thunder from 
rolling and gusty clouds ; whatever we read u in the. 
marvellous heart of man, that strange and mystic scroll," 
bearing record of past joys and pains and present hope, 
bounding to the voice of love, trembling beneath the 
flood of gladness or fear, quick to feel the burden of 
life's care, warm at the breath of sympathy, and yearn- 



226 LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 

ing wistfully towards the unfathomable secrets of futu- 
rity ; whatever we may find, too, in the deeper soul of 
man, obscurely yet solemnly conscious of an impending 
eternity of duration, swelling with hopes not earthly, 
sustained by faith direct from heaven, shrinking before 
the awful presence of holiness, yet inspired by its invig- 
orating touch, capable of an angel's bliss or a demon's 
woe; — all, all are the source and illustration of our 
faith ; from all we would gather wisdom ; to all we 
would listen reverently, as to the very voice of God. 
The word that Christ hath spoken is echoed back alike 
from nature, and history, and the human soul. 

Is it asked where shall we find material for our relig- 
ious belief, now that we have lost our confidence in the 
literal and infallible inspiration of the record which con- 
tains the lives and thoughts of so many good and holy 
men, — which embodies to us, too, the divine words and 
diviner life of the Saviour of the world ? Behold, we 
answer, the universe is our school, and God is our 
teacher, and human life is our interpreter. We refuse 
not to others the form they find good for themselves. 
We deny not to others the more spiritual faith they 
seek, — *the reality of their heart's experience, the meas- 
ure of truth contained in their more airy and imaginative 
forms of thought. But for ourselves we accept no 
pledges, and bind ourselves to no bonds. Let our 
spirit be earnest, our intention sincere, we trust the good 
God, to whom alone we are accountable. Free and 
strong as the wing of the bird of heaven, reverent and 
gentle as the spirit of a child at prayer, should be the 
action of our mind when following the infinite topics of 
thought suggested as the subject-matter of our faith. 
Diversities of operations there will be and must be. 



LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY. 227 

God hath ordained it so. He never meant we should 
be uniformed and liveried in our service of truth. 
Rather does he bid welcome to every free and earnest 
mind, promising to redeem it in his own good time 
from sin and error, that wandering man may be restored 
to those cc everlasting habitations," where He shall be 
all in all. 



THE END. 



CROSBY & NICHOLS S PUBLICATIONS. 6 

SERxMONS ON CHRISTIAN COMMUNION. Designed to 
promote the Culture of the Religious Affections. Edited by 
Rev. T. R. Sullivan. 12mo. pp. 403. Price, $ 1.00. 

This work is not confined to the subject of the Lord's Supper, but " forms 
a series of practical discourses of the persuasive kind, relating to repentance, 
or the duty of commencing the Christian course, — to edification, or the en- 
couragements to progressive Christian improvement, — and to the eucharistic 
service, as affording exercise for all the grateful and devout affections of the 
heart in every stage of its subjection to Christian discipline." — Pre/ace. 
The following is a list of the writers : — 

Rev. G. E. Ellis. Charlestown. 

" G. Putnam, D. D M Roxbury. 

11 J. H. Morison, Milton. 

11 A. Young, D. D., Boston. 

" E. B. Hall, D. D., Providence. 

" S. G. Bulfinch, Nashua. 

" O. Dewey, D. D.. New York. 

11 S. Osgood, Providence. 

" A. Hill, Worcester. 

" W. H. Furness, D.D., Philadelphia. 

" N. L. Frothingham, D.D., Boston. 

" E. Peabody, Boston. 

" S. K. Lothrop, " 

11 C. A. Bartol, " 

" A. B. Muzzey, Cambridge. 



Rev. H. A. Miles, Lowell. 

" F. Parkman, D. D., Boston. 

" S. Judd, Augusta. 

" F. D. Huntington, Boston. 

" C. T. Brooks, Newport. 

" N. Hall, Dorchester. 

" J. I. T. Coolidge, Boston. 

" G. W. Briggs, Plymouth. 

" A. A. Livbrmore, Keene. 

w J. Whitman, Lexington. 

" J. W. Thompson, Salem. 

'* H. W. Bellows, New York. 

" E. S. Gannett, D. D., Boston. 

" A. P. Peabody, Portsmouth. 

" J. Walker, D D., Cambridge. 

" C. Bobbins, Boston. 

"The design of the work is admirable, and we doubt not it is admirably 
executed, and will promote the best interests of our churches. We chanced to 
open at Sermon XVIII., on Christian Education, and were pleased to see the 
idea of Dr. Bushnell's celebrated book on ' Christian Nurture ' illustrated and 
urged in a sermon by Dr. Putnam, preached two years before Dr. Bushnell's 
book made its appearance." — Christian Register. 

11 The tone of these sermons, their living interest, their unpremeditated vari- 
ety in unity, fit them well for this purpose, — close personal influence on i»inds 
of widely differing views, united in the one great aim of a Christian life. We 
shall probably take an early opportunity of making some selections." — Chris- 
tian Inquirer. 

"We think the volume is upon the whole one of the best volumes of dis- 
courses ever issued from the American press." — Boston Daily Atlas, 

THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES, their Origin, Peculiarities, 
and Transmission. By Rev. Henry A. Miles. 16mo. 
pp. 174. Price, 50 cents. 

This work is designed for families and Sunday Schools, and contains a com- 
parison of each Gospel with the education, life, and character of its author, 
and with the purpose which he had in view in its composition ; as also an ac- 
count of the transmission of the Gospels down to our time, and the evidence 
of their uncorrupted preservation. 

" This volume by Mr. Miles has substantial value. It is by the circulation 
and use of such books that Christian knowledge is to be extended, and Chris- 
tian faith confirmed. By a thorough study even of this small work in child- 
hood, many persons might have the satisfaction of carrying through life a clear 
and connected idea of the biographies of Jesus, and of the nature of the exter- 
nal evidence in their favor, instead of remaining in vague uncertainty on the 
whole subject. Bringing into a simple and popular form, and small compass, 
information not hitherto accessible, except to a limited number of persons, the 
1 Gospel Narratives ' will be interesting to the general reader, whether youthful 
or adult. It must, without doubt, be introduced in all our Sunday Schools, 
and will rank among the most important manuals." 



4 CROSBY & NICHOLS'S PUBLICATIONS. 

NAOMI ; or Boston Two Hundred Years Ago. A Tale of the 
Quaker Persecution in New England. By Eliza Buckmin- 
ster Lee, Author of " The Life of Jean Paul." Second Edi- 
tion. 12mo. pp. 324. Price, 75 cents. 

The first edition of this popular book was exhausted within a month after its 
publication. 

{ ' Mrs. Lee has given the public a most agreeable book. Her style is ele- 
vated and earnest. Her sentiments, of the pure and the true. The characters 
are well conceived, and are presented each in strong individuality, and with 
such apparent truthfulness as almost to leave us in doubt whether they are 'be- 
ings of the mind,' or were real men and women who bore the parts she assigns 
them in those dark tragedies that stained this ' fair heritage of freedom ' in the 
early days of Massachusetts. " — Worcester Palladium. 

" We have been exceedingly interested in this book, and recommend it as 
a beautiful picture of female piety and quiet heroism, set in a frame of history 
and tradition, that cannot fail to please every one connected, however remotely, 
with the land of the Puritans. The accomplished author of ' The Life of Jean 
Paul ' has produced an American novel which we should like to see followed by 
others illustrative of the facts and manners of the olden time." — Christian 
Inquirer. 

THE MARRIAGE OFFERING. Designed as a Gift to the 
Newly-married. Edited by Rev. A. A. Livermore. 16mo. 
pp. 215. Price, 50 cents. 

" It was a happy thought that suggested such a volume. We were not aware 
before that there was so much and so various Christian literature on the sub- 
ject." — Christian Register. 

MARTYRIA ; a Legend, wherein are contained Homilies, Con- 
versations, and Incidents of the Reign of Edward the Sixth. 
Written by William Mountford, Clerk. With an Introduc- 
tion to the American Edition, by Rev. F. D. Huntington. 
16mo. pp. 348. Price, 75 cents. 

"The charm of the book lies in the elevated tone of thought and moral sen- 
timent which pervades it. You feel, on closing the volume, as if leaving some 
ancient cathedral, where your soul had been mingling with ascending anthems 
and prayers. There is scarcely a page which does not contain some fine strain 
of thought or sentiment, over which you shut the book that you may pause 
and meditate. 

" We recommend the volume to our readers, with the assurance that they 
will find few works in the current literature of the day so well worth perusal. " 
— Christian Register. 

" This is really an original book. We have seen nothing for a long time 
more fresh or true. The writer has succeeded wonderfully, in taking himself 
and his readers into the heart of the a^e he describes. What is more, he has 
uttered words and thoughts which stir up the deep places of the soul. Let 
those read who wish to commune with the true and unpretending martyr-spirit, 
the spread of faith and endurance, courage, self-denial, forgiveness, prayer. 

" Of all the treatises we have ever read on marriage, we have seen none so 
good as one here called a 'Marriage Sermon'; not that we would ask any 
couple to hear it all on their marriage day, but we commend it to all who are 
married, or intend to be. The whole book is precious." — Providence Journal. 

" There are few religious books which breathe a finer spirit than this singu- 
lar volume. The author's mind seems to have meditated deeply on the awful 
realities of life. In the thoughtful flow of his periods, and the grave, earnest 
eloquence of particular passages, we are sometimes reminded of the Old English 
prose -writers. The work is a ' curiosity ' of literature, well worth an attentive 
perusal." — Graham's Magazine. 



CROSBY & NICHOLS S PUBLICATIONS. 5 

A TRANSLATION OF PAULS EPISTLE TO THE 
ROMANS,* with an Introduction and Notes. By William 
A. Whitwell, Minister of the » Congregational Society in 
Wilton, N. H. l6mo. pp. 116. Price, 50 cents. 

" We would express a high opinion of the book, and can assure the Chris- 
tian reader who will compare it carefully with our common version, that he 
will rise up from the joint perusal of the two with a better understanding of 
Paul than he had before." — Christian Register. 

CHRISTIANITY THE DELIVERANCE OF THE SOUL 
AND ITS LIFE. By William Mountford. With an In- 
troduction by Rev. F. D. Huntington. 16mo. pp. 118. 
Price, 37J cents. 

u Mr. Mountford is full of warm religious feeling. He brings religion home 
to the heart, and applies it as the guide of the life." — London Inquirer. 

SELF-FORMATION; or the History of an Individual Mind: 
Intended as a Guide for the Intellect through Difficulties to 
Success. By a Fellow of a College. 12mo. pp. 504. Price, 
$1.00. 

"The publishers have done good service by bringing forward an American 
edition of thia work. It may be most unreservedly recommended, especially to 
the young." — Daily Advertiser. 

*' Your gift of ' Self-Formation ' is truly a welcome one, and I am greatly 
obliged to you for it. It is a work of quite original character, and I esteem it 
(in common with all I know of, who have read it) as possessed of very rare 
merit. I am glad, for the cause of good education and sound principle, that 
you have republished it, and I wish every young man and woman in the com- 
munity might be induced to read it carefully. It is several years since 1 looked 
into it in the English edition, — but I yet retain a vivid impression of the great 
delight it afforded me, and I shall gladly avail of the opportunity of renewing 
it." — Extract from a Letter. 

" This is emphatically a good book, which may be read with profit by all 
classes, but more especially by young men, to whose wants it is admirably 
adapted. The American editor is no doubt right in saying, that it is almost 
without a question the most valuable and useful work on self education that 
has appeared in our own, if not in any other language." — New York Tribune. 

THOUGHTS ON MORAL AND SPIRITUAL CULTURE. 
By Rev. Robert C. Waterston. Second Edition, revised, 
lbmo. pp. 302. Price, 62J cents. 

This book has met with a ready sale in this country, and has been republished 
in England. A London periodical, in reviewing it, says: — "We will ven- 
ture to predict that it will soon take its place on the shelves of our religious 
libraries, beside Ware 4 On the Christian Character,' Greenwood's ' Lives of the 
Apostles,' and other works to which we might refer as standard publications, 
the value of which is not likely to be diminished by the lapse of time or the 
caprices of fashion." 

11 The sense of duty in parents and teachers may be strengthened and elevated 
by contemplating the high standard which is here held up to them. The style 
has the great merit of being an earnest one, and there are many passages which 
rise into genuine eloquence and the glow of poetry." — N. A. Review. 

" The Lecture * On the Best Means of exerting a Moral and Spiritual Influence 
in Schools,' no teacher, male or female, possessed of any of the germ3 of im- 
provement, can read without benefit." — Hon. Horace Mann, Secretary of the 
Board of Education. 



6 crosby & Nichols's publications. 

DOMESTIC WORSHIP. By William H. Furness, Pastor 
of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Philadelphia 
Third Edition. 12mo. pp. 272. Price, 75 cents. 

41 We are glad to see this book. It is a work of great and peculiar excellence. 
It is not a compilation from other books of devotion ; nor is it made up of 
conventional phrases and Scripture quotations, which have been so long em- 
ployed as the language of prayer, that they are repeated without thought and 
without feeling. It is admirably adapted to the purpose for which it was writ- 
ten ; and it may be read again and again with great interest and profit by any 
one, who desires to enrich his mind with the purest sentiments of devotion, 
and with the language in which it finds its best expression. Here we have the 
genuine utterances of religious sensibility, — fresh, natural, and original, as 
they come from a mind of singular fertility and beauty, and a heart overflow- 
ing with love to God and love to man. They seem not like prayers made with 
hands, to be printed in a book, but real praying, full of spirit and life. ..... 

So remarkable is their tone of reality and genuineness, that we cannot bring 
ourselves to regard them as compositions written for a purpose, but rather as 
the actual utterances of a pure and elevated soul in reverent and immediate 
communion with the Infinite Father. " — Christian Examiner. 

LAYS FOR THE SABBATH. A Collection of Religious 
Poetry. Compiled by Emily Taylor. Revised, with Addi- 
tions, by John Pierpont. 16mo. pp. 288. Price, 75 cents. 

11 It is simple and unpretending ; and though some of the pieces are probably 
familiar to most readers, they all breathe a pure and elevated spirit, and here 
and there is an exquisite effusion of genius, which answers to the holiest wants 
of the soul. 

" Not only great pleasure may be derived from such a volume, but lasting 
and useful impressions. Many are keenly alive to the harmony of verse and 
the fresh outbursts of poetic feeling, who would pore with delight over such a 
volume, and many might thus be won to high thought and serious reflection." 

— Christian Examiner. 

THE YOUNG MAIDEN. Seventh Edition. By Rev. A. B. 
Muzzey, Author of " The Young Man's Friend," "Sunday 
School Guide," etc., etc. 16mo. pp. 264. Price, 62£ cents. 

Contents. — The Capacities of Woman ; Female Influence; Female Educa- 
tion ; Home; Society; Love; Single Life; Reasons for Marriage ; Conditions 
of True Marriage-, Society of Young Men; First Love; Conduct during En- 
gagement ; Trials of Woman and her Solace ; Encouragements. 

" The sentiments and principles enforced in this book may be safely com- 
mended to the attention of women of all ranks. Its purpose is excellent 
throughout ; and as it is everywhere governed by a just and amiable spirit, we 
believe it is calculated to do much good." — London Atlas. 

" A little work, well worthy, from its good sense and good feeling, to be 
a permanent and favorite monitor to our fair country women." — Morning 
Herald. 

A HISTORY OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS and of Religious Edu- 
cation, from the Earliest Times. By Lewis G. Pray. Embel- 
lished with two Engravings. 16mo. pp.270. Price, 62£ cents. 

44 The author has been for a long period engaged in the cause of which he 
has now become the historian ; and if ardor, perseverance, and faithfulness in 
that service qualify him to write its history, we know of no one to whom it 
could have been more properly confided." — Portsmouth Journal. 

"A volume of great interest to all who have at heart the subject discussed " 

— Literary World. 



